The Embassy Hill mechanics were weary. After a long week’s testing in late November at the Paul Ricard circuit, the team clambered aboard Graham Hill’s personal Piper Aztec at the Marseille-Marignane airport, ready for the trip back home to Britain.

Minutes away from the tiny Elstree Airport in Hertfordshire, Hill hit thick fog and, with visibility poor, fatally clipped a set of trees at the well-to-do Arkley Golf Course. The subsequent crash was horrific. All of the passengers tragically perished within the wreckage, Hill among them. Engineers Ray Brimble, Andy Smallman, Terry Richards and Tony Halcock were also casualties, along with a promising young driver named Tony Brise. That evening, a terrific talent was lost to the world.

Anthony Brise’s life began in Dartford, a town in South-East London overlooking the River Thames and precariously sitting within the county of Kent. His upbringing was atypical of the charmed lifestyles of many racing drivers; instead of silver-spoon pacifiers, Tony’s formative years were spent living on his father John’s pig farm. John was a handy racer in his own right, and dabbled in both stock cars and Formula 3 racing, winning three World Stock Car championships in the 1950s and 60s.

Naturally, the motorsport bug bit Tony from a very young age, and John decided to support both Tony and younger son Tim in go-karts.

Young Tony’s first taste of racing competition came at just eight years of age, and he was immediately hooked. His father put aside his own racing career to support his son through the karting ranks, helping Tony become the British national karting champion in 1969. He made the step up to cars in the latter stages of the following year, piloting a geriatric Elden machine in the BOC Formula Ford 1600 championship with little success. Brise’s first full season was a lot better; getting his hands on a vastly more competitive Merlyn, he grabbed an impressive second overall in the championship.

These noteworthy performances brought Brise to the attention of a Mr. Bernard Charles Ecclestone, a diminutive but hard-nosed “wheeler-dealer” who had recently purchased the Brabham concern. Ecclestone offered Brise a seat with his F3 team, which he duly accepted.

After a few races, it became clear that the Brabham BT28 wasn’t exactly up to scratch with Brise wisely deciding to trade it for a GRD 372, which looked competitive in the hands of rival Roger Williamson. His fortunes improved, and GRD owner Mike Warner offered Brise the departing Williamson’s seat for 1973.

Brise enjoyed his most successful season so far, and won both the John Player and the Lombard F3 championships; beating the likes of Alan Jones and Jacques Laffite to the former, the latter’s honours were shared between Brise and Richard Robarts. The well-funded Robarts flashed enough cash to make an immediate step up to F1 in 1974 but, despite his successes, Brise couldn’t even find enough for an F2 drive.

Scraping together enough to buy a Formula Atlantic-spec March 733, he made his first appearance in the third round, held at Silverstone. Surprisingly, against the newer equipment of his rivals, Brise won. Then, only a week later at Snetterton, Brise wrote off the car he’d only just been able to afford; as ever, fortune in motorsport can change in the blink of an eye.

Helpfully, his luck changed again. Impressed by the young Brit, a man named Teddy Savory called Brise and offered him a seat in his Modus team for the rest of the Formula Atlantic season. After a steady start with Modus, Brise began to get into his stride and secured comfortable wins at Mondello Park and Brands Hatch in the final stages of the season. Savory knew that he had a brilliant talent on his hands, and offered Brise an extension of his contract into 1975.

With no Formula 1 drives forthcoming at the start of the year, Brise accepted, and took six wins en route to the John Player Formula Atlantic championship title.

Brise pilots a Modus in the 1975 British Formula Atlantic championship.

Although he’d started the year without an F1 drive in his pocket, Brise finally got his long-awaited call-up to the big time in late April, courtesy of Frank Williams. Williams needed a short-notice replacement for former F3 rival Jacques Laffite, who decided to pursue his European F2 title ambitions at the Nurburgring rather than attend the clashing Spanish Grand Prix. Brise saw this as his best chance to put himself in the shop window and duly accepted, joining the Williams team for the Montjuïc Park round.

It was a tough weekend for Brise to join the F1 circus, and began inauspiciously as the GPDA briefly went on strike over the incorrectly assembled Armco barriers. The marshals and various team mechanics worked overnight to make sure the barriers were bolted together properly; even Ken Tyrrell had fetched a spanner from the garage to help out.

Although he had no experience of the undulating Barcelona street course, Brise hustled his FW03 to an impressive 18th place on the grid, just ahead of Roelof Wunderink’s Ensign and the Hesketh of Alan Jones. The race itself was a melancholy affair. Characterised by an abundance of attrition in the early stages of the grand prix, Rolf Stommelen’s rear wing broke on lap 26 and sent the Embassy Hill driver into the barrier, rebounding over the fence on the opposite side of the circuit. Tragically, five people died.

Brise managed to stay clear of the chaos, and rose to an impressive seventh before the race was stopped on lap 29 on safety grounds. Although he handled the circumstances admirably, Brise handed the keys back to Laffite for the Monaco Grand Prix, where events would conspire to bring the Brit back into the F1 fold shortly after.

Brise dragged the Williams FW04 to a fine seventh at Montjuïc Park, before the race was aborted after a tragic accident.

Forever Formula 1’s jewel-in-the-crown, the glitzy backdrop of the French Riviera brings the Monaco Grand Prix to life, along with raucous boat parties and affluent, well-dressed spectators. Among the frivolity was Graham Hill – “Mr. Monaco” – the victor of five grands prix at the Monte-Carlo circuit. Hill had set up his own F1 team a couple of years before to keep his own racing career alive, but the two-time champion was washed-up, and was treading water against the younger talents on the grid.

Failing to qualify in Monte-Carlo, Hill called time on his racing career to focus on team management. Remembering his Montjuic performance, as well as a largely impressive showing in the Monaco F3 support race – although a collision with Alex Ribeiro ended his hopes of victory – Hill offered the now-vacant drive to Brise, to partner Australian Vern Schuppan at the team.

Brise’s first race with the Embassy Hill team was at the Zolder Circuit in Belgium, and the young Brit immediately repaid Hill’s faith by securing an excellent seventh on the grid, outqualifying the likes of Emerson Fittipaldi and Jody Scheckter. The Hill-Ford package didn’t quite possess the pace to keep pace with the front-runners, and nor did it have the reliability; the Cosworth DFV engine let go in the first quarter of the race and put paid to any chance of a good result.

Nonetheless, Brise made up for it in the next race at Anderstorp. Starting from a relatively lowly 17th, he set about carving through the field and swashbuckled his way up to fourth position before reliability issues struck. Brise became stuck in fourth gear, which stymied any further progress and forced the Hill driver to let Mario Andretti and Mark Donohue trickle past. Regardless, Brise crossed the line in an excellent sixth position to score his first world championship point, albeit a lap down on winner Niki Lauda.

He continued to mark himself as a star of the future, securing a brace of seventh-place finishes at Zandvoort and Paul Ricard ahead of some tough competition, although perhaps a little shine had come off of his season towards the end as rookie errors started to set in.

Despite outpacing new team-mate Alan Jones, his old F3 adversary, Brise was involved in a couple of accidents and was unable to add to his 1975 points tally. An amazing sixth on the grid at Monza delighted the Embassy Hill team as Brise outqualified the likes of Reutemann, Hunt and Pace, but a spin at the chicane on the second lap brought an abrupt end to Brise’s day.

Even though the year petered out somewhat, the Hill team – especially Graham – were mightily impressed with Brise. The team had gone through its growing pains as a new entrant and had begun to gel; everyone was looking forward to 1976, Hill’s first full season as a constructor.

Brise behind the wheel of the Lola-based Hill, resplendent in Embassy colours.

Former mechanic Ian Flux, in an interview with Motorsport.com, recalled: “Tony was all about natural talent and Graham saw that, which is why he looked after him so well. Graham loved Tony, and he was like a grown-up son to him.

“He really believed in Tony.”

The Embassy Hill family set to work on putting its plans in motion for ’76. In Brise, the team had a driver on which it could build around. Andy Smallman was in charge of penning the new Hill GH2, another development of the Lola T370 commissioned by the team in 1974. Eschewing the glum British weather, Hill began its winter testing program at the Paul Ricard circuit in the south of France, and progress was looking good.

With plenty of seat-time in the GH2, Brise started to feel much more at home, and by the end of the week was brimming with confidence in the new car. Flux recalls: “The last [telegram from Brise] was ‘car now brilliant – test ended – see you Monday morning’.”

That Monday morning never came. On the 30th November, 1975, the world woke up to the shocking news that Hill, Brise and the team of engineers and mechanics all died in the plane crash at Elstree. Brise, at just 23 years old, had his life tragically cut short. A young and talented driver, what Tony Brise could have achieved in Formula 1 will forever be unknown.

Part 1: The beginning of an E.R.A.

William Kenneth Richardson was never destined to be a racing driver. Already, his early life wasn’t the kind you’d expect a racing driver to have. The son of a local butcher, Richardson’s father wanted him to join the family profession. Instead of a life of chopping meat and slicing beef, Richardson wanted chop shops and slicing metal instead, and so he ditched his father’s aspirations by earning his living as a mechanic.

Okay, maybe not quite the living his father imagined the junior Richardson would have, but for Ken it worked out a treat. He spent a few short years in the trade before being picked up by racing driver Raymond Mays in 1933 to become his chief mechanic for his new little project: English Racing Automobiles. And the little project, shockingly, went quite alright for Mays and Richardson. Despite being built by panel-beaters and early chassis suffering from horrendous handling issues, they stumbled upon a masterstroke. With Dick Seaman and B. Bira (who named his chassis Romulus, Remus and Hanuman, how sweet of him) at the helm, ERA notched up rather notable results both locally and internationally.

By 1939, though, their investors opted to pull out of the team. This would demotivate any aspiring constructor, but not to Mays or Richardson. Mays had a vision for a brand-new motor. It was bold.

1.5 litres. Supercharged. Vee-freakin’-sixteen.

Just LOOK at this thing.

While the war would put these plans on hold, by 1947 Mays was all ready to start building the behemoth. With some notable backers like Tony Vandervell and Sir John Black, the new project would no longer be under the E.R.A. banner. The factory got sold off to a bus manufacturer and the name and assets handed over to Leslie Johnson. The new project had a new name: British Racing Motors, or B.R.M. for short. Ken Richardson continued to be under the employ of Raymond Mays as both a development driver and a chief mechanic for the insane project.

Richardson probably thought that he’d remain in those roles for the rest of his time in British Racing Motors. Fate, though, had other plans.

Part 2: Chucked into the deep end

Fast forward to May 1949, and still the B.R.M. V16 wasn’t finished yet. It was going through the motorsport equivalent of development hell. This prompted backer Tony Vandervell – later to start up the Vanwall team – to give Raymond Mays, Richardson and co something of a break from the long, tireless work on the engine.

The 1949 British Grand Prix was coming up, and Vandervell was entering one of his “Thinwall Specials“, a Ferrari 125, into the race. Given that Mays was a journeyman racing driver himself, Vandervell offered him the drive. Of course Mays wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to race a Ferrari in a Grand Prix. Having done so for several races previous, he once again roped Richardson into being his chief mechanic for the upcoming event.

Ken Richardson (right) being all smiles next to his boss, Raymond Mays before the 1949 Jersey Road Race

Mays could only qualify nineteenth in the field of 25, though. If the qualifying performance wasn’t an indication he was struggling big time. The car was absolutely nasty through the turns, the ill-handling chassis frustrating Mays to no end. Exhausted by his attempts to keep the thing on track, Mays made a ballsy decision during a pitstop.

He handed the car over to Richardson. The poor lad, as far as my sources go, never took part in a competitive race before today. Yet here he was, tossed into the shark-infested deep end with a devilishly difficult car to handle. On lap 82, the inevitable happened as Richardson’s Ferrari pirouetted right round at Abbey Curve and impacted the crowd. But for the grace of god, none of the five spectators he struck were seriously injured. After this close shave, Richardson wisely stepped away from racing and continued to labour over the B.R.M. V16 project.

On December 15, 1949, B.R.M finally unveiled their Type 15 to the public at their test track at Folkingham, with Mays behind the wheel for a couple of demonstration runs. The car was far from the finished product, though, a major tip off being that it had no wing-mirrors whatsoever. It would need more and more development, more and more upgrades and more and more testing before it was to be race ready.

Richardson clocking in the endless miles he would go through testing the BRM Type 15 (Marcus Clayton Collection)

So Richardson stepped in. As Mays and designer Peter Berthon did the schmoozing and promoting, Richardson did the trucking. With Ken behind the scenes testing the car round-the-clock, non-stop, Mays previewed the V16 at the British Grand Prix in a demonstration run in front of Prince Phillip. Richardson even claimed he reached the dizzying heights of 203 miles per hour in the car. Everything was on the up for them…

…up until their racing debut at the 1950 BRDC International Trophy, that is. In tests at Folkingham three days before the event, both of their V16 engines gave up the ghost completely, seemingly beyond repair. Yet still, their backers still urged them to compete in the trophy and get some representation on home soil. Ken Richardson and his crew then went on to complete the greatest feat in engineering that you’ve never heard of. They somehow managed to craft one V16 engine out of the two broken ones in an insane all-nighter. Cutting down from the original plan of four entrants, the sole chassis was left to Frenchman Raymond Sommer to do B.R.M. proud. He completed a three-lap test run in the warmup to make sure the makeshift engine was actually functioning before the race. It seemed like the B.R.M. would be ready to show the public what it was made of…

British Pathé weren’t exactly masters of subtlety. Sommer couldn’t get his Type 15 off his grid spot at all. A dull metallic crunch indicated a broken transmission. The once supportive crowd turned on B.R.M. in an instant. The viewing public tossed pennies into the cockpit as the car got pushed back into the pits. In the snap of a finger, B.R.M would transform from Britain’s greatest promise in motor racing to a laughing stock. Nevertheless, Mays and Richardson pressed on with the project. Their morale was revived somewhat when Reg Parnell led the B.R.M. to victory in a small, rainy Goodwood meet later that year. Buoyed by the promise showed at Goodwood, their sights were set on the 1951 British Grand Prix, entering two cars for Parnell and Peter Walker.

The B.R.M squad managed to flip opinions during the race, with Peter Walker coming in seventh and Parnell an impressive fifth. However, their races were hampered by the simplest of design flaws: the exhaust for the car ran within the bodywork of the car. All this caused a nigh-unbearable heat in the cockpit for Parnell and Walker to deal with. Though Parnell was able to withstand it, you couldn’t say the same for Walker. He was on the verge of passing out over the last fifty miles and he could barely walk out of the car under his own power. By the time the Italian Grand Prix rolled around, Walker wisely opted to stay away from burning himself further in the oven and join Jaguar for the Tourist Trophy that same weekend, so there was one seat to spare…

… enter the one guy with more knowledge about the car than anyone else, Ken Richardson. The mechanic and perennial test driver got gifted a golden, glorious chance to enter a Formula One World Championship event.

Starting it, however, was an entirely different story.

Part 3: License, Legend, Refused, Retreat

Straight from the off, it would seem Richardson’s attempt at starting a Grand Prix would be in jeopardy. The Royal Automobile Club (RAC) were having doubts about Richardson right off the bat, given how his only appearance in a race ended with his car becoming a human lawnmower. Raymond Mays pleaded with officials to allow Richardson to race, and in a show of heart, the RAC relented. But with a condition. Richardson would be allowed to drive during practice while under scrutineering from officials in Monza, who would then inform the RAC about proceedings, and only then will the verdict on Richardson come out.

So, in layman’s terms, the qualifying session for the Italian Grand Prix was also Ken Richardson’s equivalent to a superlicense test.

As practice went, Richardson actually seemed to impress out in Monza. Though a full three seconds behind teammate Parnell, Richardson managed to place his B.R.M tenth on the grid, ahead of the entire Gordini squad, the bunch of Talbot-Lagos and even Chico Landi’s Ferrari. He skidded into the straw bales on one lap, but despite that, officials in Monza sent a positive telegram to the RAC.

Reg Parnell’s (right) and Richardson’s smiles in the Monza paddock look and feel forced. Given B.R.M’s track record at the time, I don’t blame them.

Richardson was back in mechanic mode on race day tending to Parnell’s car, whose engine busted due to a clogged oil filter. His work was interrupted by news from Britain. Thanks to that one excursion into the hay bales, the RAC denied Richardson of his license to compete in the Grand Prix. Yep, the tenth placed driver on the grid was not allowed to start. With Parnell’s car beyond repair and Richardson refused a license, it was almost like B.R.M. were never going to start when a saving grace came.

Hans. Freakin’. Stuck. For some reason, the 50-year-old driver from Auto Union’s glory days way back when was in the same hotel that the team were residing. Out of NOWHERE, B.R.M. had this racing legend on hand with nothing to do, all prepared to take over Richardson’s car. To have an Auto Union legend step in to replace your handy mechanic for the race was the stuff of B.R.M.’s dreams.

And yet, as with most of B.R.M.’s early outings, it ended up a nightmare. All Stuck’s practice laps proved was that Richardson’s trip into the bales rendered the car irreparable and once again, B.R.M would go home with two ugly Did Not Starts. One of those DNS’s would be Ken Richardson’s only blemish on the Formula One scene.

With the World Driver’s Championship next year reverting to Formula Two rules, the V16 was rendered obsolete. Now completely ridiculed, B.R.M would pretty much retreat to entering Formula Libre and local races for the next few years, not returning until 1954 with a much more successful outcome. By then, though, Richardson was gone from B.R.M, but he was yet to venture into his most successful tenure in motorsport

Part 4: Triumph at Triumph

Skip ahead a good year or so from the 1951 Italian Grand Prix. It’s 1952, and you’re Ken Richardson, having seen your F1 debut go up in smoke and your pet project labelled obsolete. Furthermore, Tony Vandervell offered you another opportunity to impress in a five-lap race at Goodwood, only for you to bin his car – again – on lap 1. Chances are you’re feeling a little down. Then comes a call on your phone and it’s from one of the last people you expect.

It was Sir John Black, a former backer of B.R.M, who contacted Richardson in October. He recently released a concept car, the Triumph 20TS, a sports car that would be relatively affordable to the general public, and he called up Richardson’s years of testing experience to give the car a good shakedown.

Let’s just say Richardson’s vetting of the concept wasn’t exactly…positive.

Other quips included “This caused several moments for me than can only be described as very unpleasant adrenaline cocktails”, and “…like a dog’s breakfast.” Hardly an auspicious start for Triumph’s new car.

The sensible decision for Sir Black would be to fire him. Instead, out of the blue, Sir Black offered him to help develop the “death trap” into a usable sports car. Richardson himself was well up to the challenge. Under his guidance, Triumph released the renamed TR2 in 1953. Much improved from the “dog’s breakfast”, the car started to be a huge hit in America of all places, and pretty soon the car became Triumph’s top earner. For Sir John Black, though, he set his mind on one thing: speed. He wanted to prove how fast the TR2 was.

So, he asked Ken Richardson to point the car down the arrow-straight stretch of highway in Jabbeke, Belgium and absolutely throttle it. Richardson complied, and the power was something to be believed. As evidenced in this film, Richardson and his Triumph trashed the speed record for cars under 2000cc with a mind blowing 124.88 mph in speed trim.

Richardson and his record-breaking Triumph TR2 at Jabbeke

With such speed, it’s no wonder the TR2 was a showstopper in the Motorsports world as well. With privateer TR2’s dominating the 1953 RAC Rally, Triumph made the move to set up a competitive division with its boss being the butcher’s son, Raymond Mays’ former personal mechanic and speed record holder Ken Richardson himself.

Under his guidance, Triumph went on to be a dominant force in the Rally scene, with their complete top 5 lockout in the 1956 Alpine Rally and the Team Prize in the 1961 24 Hours of Le Mans being the biggest highlights under Richardson’s leadership. Richardson himself offered a hand in driving his own cars in events like Le Mans and the Mille Miglia, teaming up with Maurice Gatsonides, inventor of the speed camera. Unlike his previous, futile attempts behind the wheel, he actually didn’t embarrass himself, even managing to win his class in the 1955 Liege-Rome-Liege rally.

Ken Richardson and Maurice Gatsonides in their Triumph for the 1954 Mille Miglia

Richardson quit Triumph in 1961 in opposition of British Leyland’s takeover of the company. However, some sources say he was actually dismissed by Leyland, so this is a bit of a contentious issue here. Following a brief and unsuccessful stint managing TVR’s competition division in 1962, disappointing founder Trevor Wilkinson so much he left the company, Ken Richardson backed away from major motorsport competition, only competing in the odd racing meet from time to time. He passed away in 1997 aged 85, leaving behind a legacy developing one of the more insane engines to grace Formula One, one of the most dramatic careers without even a single start and developing one of the most famous British sports cars of the decade.

Sources:

The Illustrated History of Triumph Sports and Racing Cars
By G. William Krause

Grand Prix Ferrari: The Years of Enzo Ferrari’s Power, 1948-1980
By Anthony Pritchard

Raymond Mays’ Magnificent Obsession
By Bryan Apps

BRM V16: How Britain’s Auto Makers Built a Grand Prix Car to Beat the World, Volume 16 By Karl Ludvigsen

]]>Profile: André Lottererhttps://gprejects.com/drivers/andre-lotterer
Sat, 30 Sep 2017 07:52:30 +0000https://gprejects.com/?p=1226It’s not uncommon for Formula 1 drivers to turn their attention to sportscars, especially when they’ve been displaced from their drive by someone younger, richer or more talented. Even the most cursory glance at the World Endurance Championship entry list will yield a number of familiar names to those who have followed F1 in the past decade.

It’s much more of a rarity for drivers to drift the other way – swimming against the established current – and put a secure career with a roof over their heads for a shot in the “big time”. In recent years, endurance racers have been able to double-up by participating in Formula E, but F1’s door rarely remains open for those who depart – let alone those who wish to make belated debuts in the sport.

With that in mind, the Formula 1 fraternity was understandably tinged with confusion after it was announced that André Lotterer was to race for Caterham in the 2014 Belgian Grand Prix.

Caterham was on its last legs and, although the team had been “purchased” by the mysterious Engavest consortium, the team was devoid of income ever since erstwhile owner Tony Fernandes decided to stop bankrolling them. It was a truly left-field move, and most had assumed that Lotterer’s chance of a spell in F1 had come and gone.

But it’s not that Lotterer didn’t deserve it. If anything, he probably deserved more.

Born in the German city of Duisburg in November 1981, Lotterer moved to Nivelles at the age of two with his Belgian mother, essentially making his appearance at Spa – 33 years later – a home race. He spent a early years taking the conventional karting route, before stepping up to single-seaters in 1998.

Winning a pair of Formula BMW categories in consecutive years – beating the likes of Dirk Werner and Martin Tomczyk to the Formula BMW junior title in ’98 before dominating Formula BMW ADAC with consummate ease the year after – Lotterer elected to make the jump to German Formula 3 at the turn of the new millennium.

Lotterer more than proved his worth in 2000, taking fourth in German F3 with a year-old car and finishing behind Giorgio Pantano, Alex Müller and future WEC rival Pierre Kaffer. Instead of sticking around in the series for a second-year tilt at the title, Lotterer crossed the Channel to participate in the highly-rated British F3 championship, joining the Jaguar Junior Team along with Australia’s James Courtney. As part of Jaguar’s development program, Lotterer got his first taste of F1 machinery in the winter of 2000, piloting the recalcitrant Jaguar R1 around Barcelona.

Unfamiliar with the British racing scene and its cast of circuits, Lotterer only finished seventh overall in British F3 – a pair of poles, a win and a second place at Snetterton forming the German’s best weekend in the 2001 series. Nonetheless, Jaguar had seen plenty of potential, and offered Lotterer an official test role for 2002 after an impressive Masters of F3 result in Zandvoort – in which Lotterer finished second behind winner Takuma Sato.

A fresh-faced Lotterer takes a snooze in the Jaguar R2.

Tasked with chalking up the laps in Jaguar unsuccessful R3, Lotterer continued to impress the Jaguar team over 2002. A couple of one-offs in CART and the FIA GT championship served as his only racing experiences that year, and hopes were pinned on a full-time 2003 seat. After Ford put the majority of Jaguar’s management team to the sword and waved drivers Eddie Irvine and Pedro de la Rosa out of the factory doors, Lotterer was heavily linked to one of the now-vacant drives.

He never got the chance to show what he could do. Having signed Mark Webber after a terrific debut season with Minardi, the Big Cat decided F3000 front-runner Antonio Pizzonia was a better bet for the second car, leaving Lotterer out in the cold.

Tail firmly between his legs, Lotterer turned his attention to conquering Japan and signed up with Nakajima Racing for 2003 to dovetail Formula Nippon with Super GT. He took the nation by storm over the next few years, finishing in the top five of the standings in every single Formula Nippon (and later, Super Formula) season he raced in, winning a long-awaited series title in 2011. He also captured a pair of Super GT crowns in 2006 and 2009, winning the GT500 category with Juichi Wakisaka with the Toyota-backed Team TOM’S.

Lotterer races in Formula Nippon for Petronas Team TOM’S in 2010 (photo: Morio)

Lotterer’s successes in Japan led to a speculative call-up from dentist-turned-team owner Colin Kolles, who offered the German a return to Europe in 2009 with a 24 Hours of Le Mans drive. Partnering Narain Karthikeyan and Charles Zwolman Jr in Kolles’ #14 Audi R10, the trio placed seventh overall, nine laps and two places ahead of their sister car, the #15.

From there, Lotterer embarked on a seriously successful endurance racing career with Team Joest. Rather than dress it up with an extensive narrative, it’s perhaps easier to state the facts here: he won the 24 Hours of Le Mans three times with Marcel Fässler and Benoît Tréluyer, and the trio were podium finishers on two further occasions. They also won the inaugural World Endurance Championship together.

So, having carved out a career as one of the best endurance racers on the planet, how on earth did Lotterer end up behind the wheel of the aesthetically-challenged Caterham CT05 at Spa?

Colin Kolles was to thank once more. Having been installed as Caterham’s “troubleshooter” after an overly-complicated takeover bid, Kolles set to work on bringing in cash to keep the team ticking over. The popular Kamui Kobayashi had brought a small bit of cash to the team, but not enough to keep the Japanese driver in the team. Instead, Hype Energy – an energy-drinks brand which had built its entire business through its F1 branding in the 1990s – offered to bankroll a deal where Lotterer would assume driving duties.

Lotterer squeezes on his skid-lid at Spa (Active Photos)

Twelve years after his final appearance in a Formula 1 car, Lotterer returned to the pack, coincidentally with another team adorned in British Racing Green. Clawing after that oh-so-vital 10th place in the World Constructors’ Championship – the cut-off point in the FIA’s prize money payments – Lotterer’s knowledge of the Spa-Francorchamps circuit was another motivating factor in the deal.

Most onlookers expected Lotterer to struggle, but had very quickly established himself as a bona-fide F1-level driver. Outpacing team-mate Marcus Ericsson in the first practice session, Lotterer continued to acquit himself well as he hurled the CT05 around the seven-kilometre blast around the Ardennes.

If Lotterer had impressed some of the F1 contingent in his practice outings, he ought to have impressed the majority with his stellar qualifying performance. A rainy qualifying session brought a new challenge for Lotterer, who now had to wrestle the bulky green Caterham around in the wet.

He outqualified Ericsson by almost a full second.

Even more impressively, Lotterer was half-a-tenth slower than Sauber’s Esteban Gutiérrez; it was a fantastic result, especially given the Caterham’s colossal list of shortcomings in 2014. Sadly, that was as good as it got, and Lotterer survived just a single lap before his CT05’s electrics packed up.

Kolles offered Lotterer a reprisal of his role at the following Italian Grand Prix but, understandably, he turned it down. Needing more time to familiarise himself with the car, Lotterer was hardly enthused with the idea that the first free practice session had been farmed out to Roberto Merhi, and so politely declined the drive.

Watch: Lotterer tackles the Spa-Francorchamps circuit in the Caterham CT05.

Offered the chance to join the Caterham again at Abu Dhabi – now beset by administration, but inexplicably in the Middle East as a result of a crowdfunding project – Lotterer wisely declined once more, leaving Will Stevens to trigger the majority of blue flags in the 2014 finale.

A triple-Le Mans winner deserved more than just one lap in a Formula 1 race. Andre Lotterer had a brilliant endurance racing career – surely, he’ll go down as one of the sportscar greats – but a solitary tour in a lacklustre F1 car, no matter how impressive, was a colossal waste of a great talent.

With the withdrawals of Audi and Porsche in WEC, Lotterer will now join up with the Techeetah outfit for the 2017-18 Formula E championship, partnering fellow F1 cast-off Jean-Eric Vergne, and will hopefully be another thrilling step for a highly-versatile, highly-successful racing talent.

Driving is an art form. At least that’s what the common metaphor claims. Graham Hill claimed to be an artist, the track serving as his canvas. Garth Stein’s 2008 best-selling novel ‘The Art of Racing in the Rain’ cemented this turn of phrase in public consciousness, and it has become something of a cliché in motor racing circles. However, nestled within the obscure corners of the pantheons of gentleman drivers from the 1950s, there was a man who did not just dabble in the ‘art’ of racing. For Leslie Marr, art – specifically painting – was a full-time passion. All allegories aside, there is little in common between the fine arts and motor racing, so how did Marr end up connecting the two?

Early life

Born to a wealthy shipbuilding family in Durham on August 14th 1922, Sir Leslie Lynn Marr had the privileged upbringing one would expect from such a sentence opener. Leslie was raised in Aykley Heads House surrounded by staff reminiscent of an episode of Downton Abbey. His grandfather had been granted a baronetcy for his shipbuilding empire. Leslie’s father John died unexpectedly of pneumonia when Leslie was nine years old, so when Leslie’s grandfather passed away a year later, Leslie inherited the baronetcy.

Leslie was given exemption while at university, but joined the RAF upon graduation.

Groomed from a young age to take over the family business, he was educated away from home, first in Cumbria, then at Shrewsbury School. Encouraged by his uncle, he studied engineering, first at Durham University, then graduating from Pembroke College, Cambridge at the age of 20. Immediately upon graduating, Leslie joined the Royal Air Force as a radar operator, putting his engineering degree to good use. Leslie shared his time in World War II between naval and air bases in Britain and the Middle East, where he spent his off time building sports fields and a bar area for particularly thirsty soldiers.

It was while serving that Leslie discovered an affinity and a talent for fine arts. Picking up paint and brushes in Alexandria, he began to paint self-portraits using a small shaving mirror. Upon the War’s conclusion, he established himself in London and was introduced to the bohemian lifestyle of Soho. He soon met his future wife Dinora Mendelson, the stepdaughter of painter David Bomberg. Inspired by the meeting and keen to develop his painting skills, Leslie joined Borough Polytechnic to study painting under Bomberg.

One of Leslie’s earliest self portraits, dated to 1946.

Bomberg’s controversial ideas were the foundation of the Borough Group, of which Leslie was a founding member. Leslie had bought a bookshop in Soho and used it to exhibit the Group’s paintings, while he used his inheritance to finance Bomberg’s personal projects. After a 1948 family trip to Cyprus with Bomberg, relations became tense over Bomberg’s arrogance and unconventional methods as well as his growing financial dependence on Leslie. In 1949, Leslie had had enough, and he left the Group, divorcing Dinora soon thereafter.

While he had a financial safety net in case he fell upon hard times, Leslie remained in London, living in a run-down studio in Hampstead. Without the framework of the Borough Group around him, Leslie painted in his spare time, living off the profits of his Soho bookshop. He now owned an Aston Martin International, and while living the single life, Leslie discovered that he rather liked to drive it fast.

Before Formula 1

Falling out of love with painting, Leslie began to explore his affinity for fast cars. In 1950, he joined the Aston Martin Owners’ Club, soon entering local club events in his International. Recruiting his usual mechanic Derrick Edwards, the pair set up Écurie Oppidans, mostly competing in small meetings around London. In 1951, the Aston Martin Owners’ Club awarded Leslie the President’s Cup, given to the best season-long performance for engines under 1.5 litres.

Leslie (left) battling Ken Wharton in one of his first outings with the Connaught A-Type.

By 1952, Leslie was taking racing more seriously. Attending a club meeting at Boreham Wood, he took note of a Formula 2 race and was impressed by the engineering prowess behind the Connaught A-Type. The Connaught management was equally impressed with Leslie’s driving skills and told him that Mike Hawthorn’s father was selling his A-Type to switch to a Cooper. Leslie purchased chassis A5 for the low price of £1800 – roughly £50,000 in 2017 money. Leslie also threw in an extra £300 to convert a single-deck London bus into a transporter, earning extra cash by plastering a Dunlop advertisement along the side.

Leslie’s first outing with the Connaught was at Snetterton, but his first practice attempt ended in the grass at the end of a long straight, knocking down a small tree in the process. Progress was difficult, but he nonetheless finished third in the invitational Formula Libre race, encouraging him to enter more prestigious events.

A week later, he competed in the Madgwick Cup in Goodwood. Leslie started the 7-lap race from 18th position and finished 10th. In October, Leslie retired from the Joe Fry Memorial Trophy, before ending his season with a collision with John Webb at Silverstone.

Leslie (right) leads John Barber at Crystal Palace in 1953. Later that day, Leslie had the heaviest accident of his career.

Repairing the car over the winter, Leslie geared up for a more ambitious 1953 season, mostly consisting of Formula Libre races around Southern England. On May 25th, he competed in the Coronation Trophy, the first post-War race held at Crystal Palace. With BBC cameras watching, Leslie’s mother watched the race from home, and saw her son experience the biggest accident of his career. On the second lap, Leslie hit a small barrier on the inside of the track and was sent spinning into some nearby woods.

Leslie and Derrick Edwards worked tirelessly to fix the car for the next race in Snetterton just five days later. The long repair sessions paid off, and Leslie properly started his season with fourth place.

Getting used to the faster machinery, he recorded several podium finishes at Snetterton throughout the summer including the Formula 2 US Air Force Trophy. He also won three Formula Libre races – his first career victories against serious opposition – first in Snetterton, then in Silverstone where he faced off rather spiritedly with Rodney Nuckey.

To these successes, he added encouraging results in more important races, finishing seventh in the Madgwick Cup and fourth in the Fry Trophy. At the Wakefield Trophy around the tricky Curragh circuit, Leslie scored pole position, almost beating Stirling Moss’ absolute track record. Leslie had established himself as a reputable hand on the British scene.

Formula 1

It can be construed as ironic that while Leslie Marr owned a Formula 2 car for most of the period when the World Championship was run to F2 regulations, he never entered a championship race in 1952 or 1953. This didn’t stop him from entering the same events in 1954, most of which now included Formula 1 entries.

Leslie’s season started with a good showing at Goodwood, including third place in the Formula Libre Glover Trophy and fifth in the Lavant Cup. At the prestigious International Trophy in Silverstone, he finished a respectable 11th out of 17 finishers.

Results-wise, Leslie’s season highlight came at the first event held at Davidstow, a small, decrepit and foggy RAF base in Cornwall. Two races were held, one to F1 rules, the other to F2 rules. Because the event required going all the way to, well, Cornwall, no Formula 1 cars appeared, but the organisers maintained both races as distinct events. Both had the same length and the same field. So much for British common sense! Both races were won by John Riseley-Prichard, with Leslie finishing second in the designated Formula 2 event.

Leslie gets lapped by the Maserati of Onofre Marimón on his way to his only championship finish.

The following month, Leslie made his World Championship début. One of 32 entrants present at Silverstone for the British Grand Prix, Leslie had no hope of troubling the F1 entries with his F2 car. Even the top F2 driver in qualifying, Don Beauman, was two seconds slower than Harry Schell in the slowest F1 car.Leslie qualified 22nd, sixth of the F2 cars.

The 90-lap race was tough on the British contingent. Leslie set about simply finishing the race, and managed to spend most of it ahead of Leslie Thorne, Bill Whitehouse and Horace Gould. Leslie reached the finish in 13th place, eight laps down on José Froilán González, but four laps ahead of Thorne and 38 ahead of the ailing Gould. Leslie was third of the F2 entries, behind Beauman and Bob Gerard.

Several weeks later, Leslie finished seventh in the Gold Cup at Oulton Park, also coming home third in the Formula Libre event held the same weekend. Leslie was establishing a reputation as a fast qualifier, with top-five performances at the Gold Cup and the season-ending Madgwick Cup.

In 1954, Leslie turned his hand to acting, appearing in the feature film ‘Mask of Dust’, about a racing driver caught in a stereotypical love triangle between his wife and his love of racing. Showing off his acting chops, Leslie had a brief cameo as himself, alongside luminaries such as Stirling Moss, Reg Parnell, John Cooper, Alan Brown and Geoffrey Taylor.

By 1955, the A-Type was showing its age, and Leslie decided to buy a new car. Smitten by Connaught’s engineering, he purchased a brand-new B-Type. Convinced by designer Rodney Clarke, he paid £4000 for the streamliner version. Leslie soon found that being unable to see the wheels made him uncomfortable with the car’s handling, but it was too late, and he soldiered on.

Construction and delivery were delayed, but Leslie finally received the car in time for another meeting at Davidstow. The meeting was supposedly a Formula 1 race, but only six cars appeared, and Leslie’s B-Type was the only F1 car. He easily trampled the opposition, giving the streamlined car victory at its first race. The win gave Connaught the boost in morale to continue producing it.

Leslie’s racing calendar was less full than in previous years, largely because of the safety scare provoked by the Le Mans disaster. Many events were canceled, with the notable exception of the British Grand Prix, held for the first time at Aintree.

Leslie drives the Connaught B-Type around Aintree during the British Grand Prix.

Leslie qualified in 19th position out of 25 participants, 11.2 seconds behind Moss, and 5 seconds behind Tony Rolt in the fastest Connaught. Leslie’s start was decidedly suboptimal, stalling the Alta engine on the grid, but soon he had passed Kenneth McAlpine and Mike Sparken. After 15 laps, Leslie was running in a solid 13th position, but a faulty brake duct sent him into a spin on the 19th lap. The engine stalled again, and Leslie’s race was over. This would be his last World Championship appearance.

After Formula 1

With a dearth of events to enter and decreasing motivation, Leslie’s schedule became markedly less crowded. He finished fifth and last in the Daily Record Trophy in Charterhall in August, then retired from the Gold Cup at Oulton Park where he outpaced the works Ferraris of Peter Collins and Alfonso de Portago in qualifying.

The B-Type was a rare example of a closed-wheel F1 car.

Leslie then entered some time trial events, such as Tempsford, Brighton and Shelsley Walsh, but while he enjoyed these experiences, he did not choose to pursue them further.

On the lookout for new opportunities, Leslie was intrigued by the opportunity to race in New Zealand. Late in the year, Leslie received an offer to compete in local Kiwi events with the streamlined B-Type, with all travel expenses paid by the organisers. Leslie immediately accepted the offer to race outside Britain for the first time, and Connaught removed the Alta engine to replace it with a more powerful and reliable Jaguar D-Type 3.4-litre engine.

Leslie’s first New Zealand escapade nearly didn’t happen, as the British cars were shipped to Wellington instead of Auckland, near where the race would be taking place. Derrick Edwards was sent to retrieve the car which was held up by a dock workers’ strike, and after bribing the workers and threatening to throw the foreman into the harbour, he and Leslie were able to fly the Connaught to Ardmore for the race.

The organisers offered to pay for the emergency shipping to Auckland, but they got cold feet once the car arrived. Leslie attempted to confront them at a later meeting, but made the rookie mistake of notifying them first. This gave them the opportunity to secretly reschedule the meeting, and Leslie never got his money back.

The car only reached the paddock for the New Zealand Grand Prix the evening before the race, leaving Leslie 20th on the grid without practice or a prepared car. Nonetheless, he was racing against shoddy locally-built cars and finished the race in fourth place. Leslie followed this with a convincing third place at the Lady Wigram Trophy near Christchurch.

Leslie, now powered by a Jaguar engine, drives to third place at the 1956 Wigram Trophy.

The second half of Leslie’s New Zealand trip was markedly worse. The Dunedin Road Race was his third event, but to his horror, he found that a portion of the circuit wasn’t paved. Unwilling to go through all the maintenance associated with dirt roads, Leslie phoned in a qualifying time then withdrew from the race after a single lap.

The Southland Road Race, held at Ryal Bush near Invercargill, went rather better. Leslie qualified in second place between Peter Whitehead and Tony Gaze, though Leslie maintains he was on pole position. On the first lap, he was hit in the face by a stone kicked up by Whitehead’s Ferrari. Incensed by this, he made an impetuous attempt for the lead at the following corner, but only succeeded in reversing the Connaught into a ditch. Left to watch the race holding a beer from the bucket of a mechanical digger, Leslie decided to call a day on his antipodean escapades.

Returning to Britain, Connaught told him that he would have to pay £1000 for a new engine. Faced with the prospects of sinking more money into a hobby that he now realised could kill him, Leslie instead decided to sell the B-Type back to Connaught for the original £4000.

“I’m pleased I didn’t [win that race],” said Marr in a 2009 interview with Motorsport Magazine. “I was serious about racing, but the idea was to have fun. I’d wanted to see how far I could go, and realised after New Zealand that I wasn’t going to get any better. I still had some money left; I was still in one piece…”

After motorsport

Retiring from racing at the age of 33, Leslie returned to London and turned to a new hobby: filmmaking. He began recording local racing events, such as an Aston Martin Owners’ Club meeting, then went on to produce an amateur documentary on traditional life in Lapland.

Worldwide Pictures were impressed by the film, and asked Leslie to produce a documentary on behalf of Unilever on the gripping topic of detergents. The resulting film didn’t quite clean house at the Yugoslav Documentary and Short Film Festival in Belgrade, but nonetheless won the award for Best Documentary much to Leslie’s amusement. He later wrote in the Shropshire Star: “I could only think that it must have been the only entry.”

Leslie (left) exhibits a painting.

Offered a contract to produce equally-thrilling documentaries on essential oils, fats, soap and ground nuts, Leslie was told he had a future as a scientific documentary filmmaker. Leslie himself had a different opinion. Having renewed his interest in painting, Leslie left his job and devoted himself to his first love.

Leslie sold his bookshop and embarked upon various journeys over the following years. In the early 1960s, he moved back to London, and in 1962 he remarried. He then moved to Devon – where he taught at Barnstaple Polytechnic – before settling in Norfolk with his wife Lynn and two daughters, Joanne and Rebecca and teaching at the University of East Anglia.

He then moved to the Isle of Arran in the 1980s, but returned to Norfolk again, splitting with his second wife. Leslie remained a professional artist well into his nineties, recognised for his intense style combining a forceful technique and striking colours.Leslie Marr now resides in Norfolk with his third wife, Maureen, whom he married in 2002. Aged 95, he is the second-oldest living Grand Prix driver behind Kenneth McAlpine.

Leslie still paints today, including this landscape of Corndon in Shropshire, dated to 2016.

Leslie himself considers himself above all an artist. Interviewed by the British Library a few years ago, he explored his life’s achievements for several hours. His racing career was only discussed for 15 minutes. An apt metaphor for a brief foray into motorsport nestled within a long and rich life as a painter.

There is an oft-discussed obscure Formula One record: who had the shortest Formula One racing career? The driver most often cited for this record is Marco Apicella, the Italian driver who was knocked out of the 1993 Italian Grand Prix at the first corner. More clued-up fanatics will know that Ernst Loof’s 1953 German Grand Prix lasted all of two metres when his fuel pump failed at the start. But this fact wasn’t semi-common knowledge for a long time, and Apicella was credited with the record for years. His career arc echoed that of the man whose record he had supposedly beaten: Miguel Ángel Guerra.

Before F1: early days and Formula 4

Guerra (far right) makes his Formula 4 début in 1971.

Born in Buenos Aires on August 31st 1953, Guerra got his motorsport career started at the age of 18. These days, certain drivers already have thousands of miles in Grand Prix machinery under their belts by this age, but in the 1970s, this was not the case. Under the tutelage of Renault importer and tuner Osvaldo Antelo, Guerra entered his first Argentine Formula 4 race in 1971 in Nueve de Julio. He certainly made an impression on début, when he passed a swath of cars in a single corner. Unfortunately for Miguel, the stewards were less impressed, as he had made the move under yellow flags!

Nonetheless, Miguel proved himself to be rather deft behind the wheel and became a mainstay of the Argentine Formula 4 scene with his Crespi-Renault. In his first full season in 1972, he was the championship runner-up to Carlos Jarque, and in a similar turn of events, he finished behind Jorge De Amorrortu in 1973. Once both drivers left the series to drive more powerful machinery, Miguel was free to dominate the championship. In 1974 and 1975, he beat Agustín Beamonte to two consecutive Argentine Formula 4 titles. Like Jarque and De Amorrortu, Guerra was ready to move up in the world.

1974-77: Argentine feeder series

Guerra (right) posing with his Formula 2 car circa 1976.

In fact, in 1974, Miguel had already made his début in the Argentine Formula 2 Championship and promptly finished runner-up in the championship. As he won his second Formula 4 title in 1975, he also took his first Formula 2 crown. Going from strength to strength, he won the title again in 1976 and 1977. By then, he had also begun to drive in the Argentine Formula 1 series.

Fórmula 1 Mecánica Argentina – to refer to it by its proper name – was a series for Formula 1-styled single-seaters with 3-to-4-litre engines. The championship had notably been won by Nasif Estéfano and was contested by constructor Oreste Berta, who had made an abortive attempt at a World Championship entry in 1975. Argentine Formula 1 was a very competitive series, and it was driving a Berta that Miguel made his début in 1977. One of five drivers to complete the full season, Miguel scored three victories and seven podiums in nine races. However, this was not enough to beat defending champion Pedro Passadore, from Uruguay, who scored four wins and eight podiums.

In an era when the Argentine Grand Prix was a championship event and Carlos Reutemann was a major figure in Formula One, single-seater motorsport was very popular in Argentina. Feeling ready to move to Europe after his F4, F2 and F1 successes, Miguel found sponsors back home and got on a plane to Italy.

Miguel competed in Argentina’s premier single-seater series in 1977.

1978: First steps in Europe

Miguel poses by the Everest Chevron that started his European career.

Arriving in Europe with few connections and an obscure reputation, Miguel began to search for a drive. His first opportunity arrived in the form of Scuderia Emiliani, a small Italian team looking for a driver to make their first appearance in Formula Three. Miguel jumped on the opportunity, and on May 14th 1978, he was on the grid at Imola for the European F3 Championship. Driving a Wolf-Toyota, Miguel qualified fourth in his heat and finished fifth, ahead of the likes of Arie Luyendyk and Huub Rothengatter. Starting the final in ninth place, he ran a clean race and finished seventh, half a second behind eventual champion Jan Lammers and just ahead of Michael Bleekemolen, by then already an F1 driver.

Miguel had also beaten two drivers by the name of Gianluca Bagnara and Marco Micangeli. The pair was driving for Scuderia Everest, the outfit owned by Giancarlo Minardi. Everest were also competing in European Formula Two, with a rotating cast of Italian drivers supporting Elio de Angelis. Impressed by Guerra’s performance on a track he had never driven before, Minardi offered the Argentine a drive for the rest of the season.

Two weeks later, Miguel made his European F2 début at Mugello in a Scuderia Everest Chevron-BMW. Qualifying 22nd, less than a second behind de Angelis in a Chevron-Ferrari, Miguel finished the race 16th of 23 finishers, ahead of fellow Argentine Ricardo Zunino and motorcycle legend Giacomo Agostini. The going was tough for Everest, as the team could only rarely hope to trouble the upper midfield. After Rouen, de Angelis left the team for the works Chevron concern, and Miguel was promoted to lead driver in the Ferrari-powered car. Results improved marginally, including seventh place at Donington.

In 1978, Guerra also competed in a season-ending race in his native Buenos Aires. He finished seventh.

No points were scored by the team that year, but the Donington result led to an invitation to Maranello to discuss engine development. During a meeting with Enzo Ferrari, Miguel – partially in jest – asked about the possibility of testing a Ferrari in the future. Il Commendatore reportedly replied: “You never know…” Miguel capped the season with seventh place in a non-championship F2 race in his native Argentina.

1979-80: Formula 2

Miguel’s flashes of pace in 1978 led to a contract renewal, while Everest switched to a March chassis for 1979. Miguel would occasionally be joined by Clay Regazzoni, Gianfranco Brancatelli and Ferrante Ponti. The performance gains were immediately noticeable, as Miguel qualified in the top ten in Silverstone. He would spend most of the rest of the season starting from the sixth and seventh rows, with four exceptions: Hockenheim, Vallelunga, Pergusa and Misano. He retired from the Italian rounds, but starting from sixth in Hockenheim, he finished an excellent third behind Keke Rosberg and Rad Dougall. Along with fourth place in Thruxton and sixth place in Pau, Miguel finished the season with eight points in 14th position, tied with Alberto Colombo.

Miguel (right) ahead of Richard Dallest at Pau in 1980. The M281 was the first Minardi ever built.

This return to form for Everest was associated with Giancarlo Minardi’s nascent partnership with a Milanese Fiat dealer called Piero Mancini. A wealthy benefactor who would later create Motori Moderni, Mancini’s much-needed funds allowed Scuderia Everest to become a manufacturer in its own right. Thus, Minardi was born.

The first Minardi, powered by BMW engines, was not at the same level as the Toleman, but its reliability (four retirements in 16 starts) allowed it to often beat the more fragile March entries. Guerra himself was extremely consistent, finishing nine of eleven races, all of them in the top ten and five of them in the points, though he did not score another podium. His ten points allowed him to claim ninth place in the championship, and an impressive run of five consecutive top-ten starts were a testament to his raw pace.

1981: Formula One

In 1979, Miguel had carried out testing for Osella in preparation for their return to Formula Two. Eddie Cheever went on to drive the car to fourth place that season, eventually following Osella into Formula One in 1980. As 1981 came about, Enzo Osella prepared a second entry, but Cheever had already signed for Tyrrell. One of the Osella higher-ups remembered Miguel’s Formula Two tests and suggested him as a possible driver alongside the Italian Beppe Gabbiani. Coupled with his 1980 results, Miguel was offered the drive on the condition that he find more sponsors. The promise of Formula One exposure and Miguel’s impressive run of form made this a mere formality, and by February, the deal had been secured.

Miguel’s first Grand Prix weekend at Long Beach ended with a DNQ, the first of three.

Unfortunately for him, time was short, and he only had the time to carry out a straight-line shakedown at a Turin airfield before the cars were transported to the first race at Long Beach. By the time Miguel made his Grand Prix début, he had not yet turned a corner in anger. The United States Grand Prix West confirmed that Osella would resume their 1980 role as a firm backmarker. Of the 29 cars present in California, Guerra was only the 27th fastest, setting a 1:22.673, 3.274 seconds behind polesitter Patrese and 0.460 behind Gabbiani. To make things worse for Miguel, Gabbiani had qualified 24th, taking the last spot on the grid.

The total absence of engineers at Jacarepaguá was difficult for Miguel and the Osella team.

The situation did not improve in Brazil. Enzo Osella had not sent the team’s only engineer to the circuit, and stayed in his hotel room from Saturday onwards due to the heat. Discounting March – who had a horrendous weekend where neither driver set a meaningful lap – Gabbiani and Guerra were the two slowest drivers. Guerra’s fastest qualifying lap of 1:40.984 was almost six seconds slower than Piquet’s pole and over a second from Ricardo Zunino in 24th place. However, he was only 0.275 seconds behind Gabbiani, at the very least pointing towards familiarisation with the Osella FA1B.

Things began to look up at Miguel’s home race, as Osella cemented their place ahead of March. Both drivers outpaced Daly and Salazar, as well as Ligier’s Jean-Pierre Jabouille, still recovering from a broken leg. As Miguel was more familiar with the Argentine circuit, he qualified ahead of Gabbiani by 0.512 seconds, but he nonetheless came 0.145 seconds short from 24th, once again held by Zunino. It was clear that the Osella was not living up to its full potential. In a 2004 interview with Motor Sport Magazine, Guerra recalled: “In those days you needed good ground effects, and Osella and I simply could not get the best out of the FA1B in this respect. Something to do with adjusting the ride-height properly, I think.”

By the time the Formula 1 circus returned to Europe for the inaugural San Marino Grand Prix, Osella had taken a leaf out of Brabham’s playbook. The engineers had installed a hydro-pneumatic suspension system, allowing for a replication of ground effects and ride height control. However, this development occurred at the peak of the Lotus 88 fiasco, and the Sammarinese scrutineers did not take kindly to the system, or indeed to any attempt at bending the rules. Lotus were banned from the weekend, and all cars bar those of Renault, Ligier and Toleman were deemed illegal for various infringements.

A new suspension system allowed Miguel to finally qualify at Imola…

Many teams changed their cars overnight, but those with hydro-pneumatic suspension didn’t. Observers were posted around the track to report unusual ride heights to the stewards, but they relented when it became clear that every team had such a system. Lotus’ withdrawal gave Osella a free pass to qualifying, and the new suspension system put them ahead of ATS and the new Toleman. Miguel set a 1:38.773 in qualifying, 4.250 seconds behind Villeneuve on pole and 0.471 seconds behind Gabbiani. Nonetheless, this was the 22nd-fastest time, and Miguel was cleared to make his first start.

…but a first-lap crash left him injured and trapped in the FA1B’s crumpled cockpit.

Starting just behind Miguel on the damp grid was another South American driver making his first start: Eliseo Salazar. All drivers got a clean start, but as the field rounded the fast left-hander at Tamburello, Salazar made contact with Guerra, sending the Osella head-on into the inside retaining wall. As yellow flags were waved, an ambulance was sent onto the circuit to help extricate Guerra from the wreckage.

Miguel spent the night at Enzo Osella’s family home, and when the pain continued, he went to the hospital where he was diagnosed with a double fracture of his left ankle. The injuries did not require surgery, but his recovery was long and painful. Osella hired Piercarlo Ghinzani and Giorgio Francia to replace him temporarily, as he was expected to return to the cockpit by the French Grand Prix. This didn’t materialise, and Osella instead hired Jean-Pierre Jarier as a permanent replacement. Guerra would never drive in Formula One again.

After Formula One: Back to F2!

Upon his recovery, Miguel began to test for Minardi’s F2 team again, the 281 chassis occasionally scoring points in the hands of Johnny Cecotto and Michele Alboreto. For his loyalty, Miguel was offered a free drive at Misano towards the end of the 1981 season. Out of racing practice, Miguel nonetheless qualified 16th, ahead of teammates Cecotto and Farnetti, but behind Alboreto. The race was harsher on the Argentine, and he finished 13th and last while Alboreto, already in a full-time F1 drive, won the race.

Michele Alboreto wins for Minardi, ending Guerra’s European career once and for all.

Miguel did not stop looking for drives in Europe after his recovery, but his job was made difficult by a worsening economic crisis in Argentina, drastically reducing his sponsorship budget. As 1982 appeared, with it came the infamous Falklands War. The conflict notably caused Carlos Reutemann to leave Williams and retire from Formula 1, while the resulting blow to Argentina’s economy and global reputation ended any chance of Miguel finding another Formula One drive.

Giancarlo Minardi – who had become a close friend – told Miguel not to despair, and that he soon would have his own Formula 1 team. Miguel responded: “How are you going to have your own F1 team when you don’t even have a bolt?” Offered only a couple of part-time F2 drives, Miguel returned to Argentina. There would be no Argentine in F1 until Oscar Larrauri in 1988.

1982-87: Return to Argentina

Guerra (centre) wins the inaugural F2 Codasur race in Tarumá.

Upon his return, Miguel resumed his activities in Argentine Formula 2, by then being dominated by Guillermo Maldonado (no relation to Pastor). Once again driving a Berta-Renault, he scored four podiums, including a convincing victory at Concordia, and three fastest laps. He finished fifth in what would be the final season of Argentine F2. With most South American motorsport sanctioning bodies merging into a single confederation named Codasur, a new continental Formula 2 series would be created. Two exhibition races for the new series were held in late 1982. Miguel won the first of them in Tarumá, in Brazil.

Perhaps cautiously waiting to see if the series would be a success, Miguel did not compete in the first few races of the new championship. By the sixth race of 1983, held at Interlagos in June, over 20 drivers were regularly entering. Guerra tested a new Berta-Renault shortly thereafter, and he was on the grid in time for the next race in Rafaela. Against largely the same opposition as 1982, Miguel was immediately on the pace. Scoring two podiums in his first four races, he capped his season with victory and fastest lap in Buenos Aires. With 23 points, he finished the year in sixth place despite competing in only half of the races. The following season, he kept up his form, winning races in Rafaela and San Juan on his way to second place behind the ever-dominant Maldonado.

Miguel flaunted his consistency in F2 Codasur, including in 1985 with four podiums.

Miguel kept driving in Formula 2 Codasur in 1985, still in his trusty #46 UFO-sponsored Berta-Renault, but he struggled to keep the pace with the likes of Maldonado and Guillermo Kissling. Nonetheless, his ability to consistently perform allowed him to score four podiums, all third places, and finish a distant fourth in the championship with 22 points. The following year, Miguel’s race pace improved, leading to victories at Florianópolis and Buenos Aires. Three other podiums put him third in the championship behind Maldonado and Kissling. This would be the last season of Formula 2 Codasur, as dwindling interest led to a complete rebrand of the series.

Formula 3 Sudamericana was created in 1987, with the F2 regulars joined by new up-and-coming drivers in the same cars as the previous championship. Miguel had a lot of difficulty adapting to the new field. Only managing a single second place in the season-ending race at Villa Carlos Paz, he finished a lowly ninth. Aged 34, Miguel decided to bring an end to his open-wheel career.

1987-2001: Tin-tops and a new career path

While competing in Formula 3, Miguel had made a select few appearances in the Argentine TC2000 touring car series. His competitive performances in those outings encouraged him to pursue a new career path, and from 1988, Miguel would be driving in TC2000. Driving a Renault Fuego, Miguel made an impression on his full time début at Mar del Plata by holding up Guillermo Maldonado and Hugo Olmi, angering both drivers. Third place on début was a good indicator of Guerra’s pace, and with his trademark consistency, he scored another two podiums that year, including a maiden win at the penultimate round in Balcarce. He finished the season in fifth place.

In 1989, Miguel faced competition from Juan María Traverso, who won five races out of 12. However, despite winning only two races in San Jorge and Pigüé, Guerra scored four more podiums (as many as Traverso) and regularly finished well. At the final race in Mendoza, Guerra finished second behind Traverso and sealed the TC2000 title by eight points. The video embedded above shows the race itself and an interview (in Spanish) with Guerra.

Miguel’s 1996 Peugeot, which he drove to fourth place in the TC 2000 championship.

While this was Miguel’s last title, he remained competitive in TC2000 for a few more years. Finishing fifth in 1990, he switched his allegiance to Ford and Volkswagen in 1991 after almost 20 years with Renault. This led to a fourth place finish in 1991, including a race win, but as his results worsened, he changed again, this time to Peugeot. After a couple of difficult seasons, he returned to form in 1996, when two pole positions led to as many wins and four podiums.

In 1997, Miguel moved to the brand new South American Super Touring Championship. Competing for Ford, Chevrolet and Honda, the different cars didn’t help him to perform, as all five of his finishes were in the lower third of the top ten. For 1998, he signed full-time with INI Competición, taking the Chevrolet Vectra to a single pole position and tenth place in the championship. The following year, he set up his own team and returned to Peugeot. Top ten finishes were plentiful and culminated in victory at the penultimate round in Olavarría and ninth in the final standings. This would be Miguel’s final race victory.

The Super Touring championship already on its last legs, Miguel would drive in Turismo Carretera in the year 2000. He had occasionally won invitational races in the series throughout the 1990s, and driving a Chevrolet Nova, he scored podiums in Olavarría and Buenos Aires and finished the year in eleventh place. He continued to race into 2001, but by this point, he was 47 years old. With most of his early rivals already retired, he decided to end his career after four more races.

After racing

In 2004, Miguel became vice-president of the Top Race championship, another Argentine touring car championship. Overseeing the series’ rebranding to Top Race V6 in 2005 and the launch of two junior categories, he remained vice-president until his retirement in 2014 at the age of 61. Today, Miguel follows the career of his son Lucas Ariel, born in 1987, who won the Top Race Series in 2014 and now competes in Top Race V6.

Miguel still occasionally competes in races for veteran drivers.

Miguel Ángel Guerra is best remembered as a supremely consistent driver and one of the best Argentine drivers of his generation. Though he generally lacked the killer instinct and sheer pace to regularly contend for championships, he had enough talent and contacts to hold his own in Europe. His Formula 1 career was unlikely to last past 1981, even without his injury, but his friendship with Giancarlo Minardi is still strong. At the 2016 Minardi Day in Imola, Miguel was there to drive his old Formula 2 car. He may have regretted his decision to return to Argentina in 1982, as when Minardi finally became a Formula 1 team in 1985, Miguel was there at Jacarepaguá…to change the tyres for his old friend’s car.

]]>When stand-in Winkelhock stood out in the rainhttps://gprejects.com/drivers/markus-winkelhock-2007
Sat, 22 Jul 2017 10:59:16 +0000https://gprejects.com/?p=1141If you like your Formula 1 seasons to be packed with more stories than a bookworm’s Kindle, then the 2007 season is for you. It had everything: a young upstart embroiled in an increasingly toxic championship battle, subterfuge, politics and plenty of on-track drama; at times, it resembled a plotline not dissimilar to a John le Carré novel.

Under the surface of spy stories and courtroom drama bubbled another story of intrigue, something rarely remembered in mainstream F1 coverage, but equally as surprising. It happened almost exactly ten years ago to the date of this article’s release, when F1 took to the Nurburgring for the European Grand Prix.

Let’s set the scene. The championship fight was almost at boiling point, as tempers flared in the famously tepid McLaren setup between rookie Lewis Hamilton and reigning champion Fernando Alonso. Hamilton was in possession of a 12-point championship lead following the British Grand Prix, although the two were due to come under pressure from Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen.

But that’s not entirely important, other than to show how much storyline was stuffed into the 2007 season. With everyone focusing on the thrilling action at the front, it went almost completely under the radar that backmarkers Spyker had given Christijan Albers the chop after a year-and-a-half at the team; the Eindhoven–born driver was responsible for bringing a few fringe Dutch sponsors to their “national” team, but some had begun to default on payments. With a heavy heart, majority shareholder Michiel Mol had to find someone else to plug the gap, leaving Albers out of a drive.

Luckily, Spyker had a rotating cast of test and reserve drivers, and 27-year-old German racer Markus Winkelhock managed to scrape together enough backing for a one-off at the Nurburgring. He became the next in an ever-growing line of second-generation F1 drivers, after his father Manfred competed with Arrows, ATS and RAM in the 1980s, while his uncle Joachim was something of a touring car specialist, dabbling in F1 with backmarkers AGS.

Markus had also driven in touring cars between stints in Formula 3 and the World Series by Renault championship and – although versatile – he was never expected to set the world alight. In fact, Winkelhock’s F1 experience was limited to only a handful of Friday sessions in 2006 with Midland, the predecessor of Spyker, and struggled in the opening Nurburging sessions. Unsurprisingly, he qualified last, almost 1.5 seconds down on team-mate and compatriot Adrian Sutil.

As Sunday afternoon swept across the Eifel mountains, dark clouds slowly started to swarm around the Nurburgring. Part-way through the formation lap it became apparent that rain was imminent, and the crowd started to zip up their jackets in anticipation. The F1 field carried on circulating the track for a normal dry start, expecting to be able to deal with any downpour a few laps later. Winkelhock and Spyker – with nothing to lose – did not, sacrificing his lowly spot on the grid to gamble on a set of wet tyres.

It turned out that they’d anticipated the conditions perfectly. Half-way around the first lap, the rain started to bucket down, far than the rest of the teams had imagined and resulting in a number of drivers falling off the road. Starting from the pits, Winkelhock carved through the pack as everyone else crawled around the 5km circuit, miraculously taking the lead in his first race…in a Spyker!

It was all going swimmingly for Winkelhock as the rain intensified, while others were left treading water. A river had started to form at Turn 1, leaving a number of drivers to aquaplane into the gravel. Meanwhile, Winkelhock had built a commanding lead of 33 seconds, before the race was red-flagged on the fourth lap under the ever-worsening conditions.

After the rain had subsided, Charlie Whiting gave the go-ahead for the race to resume under the safety car. It didn’t take long for Spyker’s pride to regress into a fall, and the decision to keep Winkelhock on the full-wet tyres in the hope of more rain failed to pay off. After a few safety car laps, the circuit was ripe for intermediates, and the German rookie began to sink down the order as the track dried.

Not that it mattered, of course. On his fourteenth lap, Winkelhock’s Spyker juddered to a halt after Turn 11, the excitement of his brief lead clearly too much for the car’s hydraulics.

One-off Formula 1 appearances rarely yield success, and the sport’s history is littered with names which never made any real impression. Yet, Winkelhock’s Nurburgring heroics should be remembered, and watching the orange Spyker burst through the spray to lead a grand prix was a brief underdog story to add to the already-exciting year of 2007.

“You couldn’t write a script like this” is the all-too-familiar cry of the clichéd sportscaster. It could be argued that this is exactly the script you’d write…although probably with a happier ending.

Winkelhock never raced again in F1, as former Super Aguri driver Sakon Yamamoto was able to bring more money to the team, and competed in the rest of the season. Instead, the German racer returned to the familiar pastures of DTM before carving out a career as a very capable sportscar driver, winning the GT1 World Championship in 2012. As of 2017, he competes in the Blancpain Sprint Cup, along with other appearances in GT racing.

But on that wet day in late July, Markus Winkelhock was a front-runner in Formula 1 for seven laps, which is more than many have managed in their entire careers.

Canadian driver. Young. Inexperienced. Prone to errors. Rich parents. Father owns property in Mont Tremblant. Lance Stroll, right? Normally, yes. On March 26, he made a rather mistake-riddled début in Australia, but became the first Canadian F1 driver since 1996 world champion Jacques Villeneuve walked away from his stranded BMW Sauber at the 2006 German Grand Prix and the youngest ever to race under the Maple Leaf at the age of eighteen years. But the opening description does not only apply to Lance Stroll. In fact, it harkens back to one of Canadian motorsport’s great pioneers: Peter Ryan.

Peter Ryan is a tragic figure in racing akin to Don Beauman, Chris Bristow or Tony Brise in that he met his maker just as he was beginning to make his mark. Although technically the third Canadian to attempt to qualify for a world championship race after 1950s Indy 500 non-qualifiers Allen Heath and Hal Robson, Peter was the first to race in a world championship round in an F1 car, pitting himself against the likes of Brabham, Moss and Brooks at only twenty-one years of age in 1961.

Before Formula One

The story of Peter Bondurant Ryan begins with his father, Joseph Bondurant Ryan. Joe was an American of wealthy extraction who visited Mont Tremblant in Quebec in 1938. Together with Harry Wheeler and famed broadcaster Lowell Thomas, he climbed the mountain using skis wrapped in seal skins and there Joe proclaimed “This has to be the most beautiful sight in the world. There is only one thing wrong. It is too difficult getting up here. I have to fix that!” And so he got to work fixing that. On February 12, 1939 he made good on his promise and opened Mont Tremblant Lodge, a ski resort which was one of the first in the world to use chairlifts. In April that same year he met Mary Rutherfoord Johnson at a reception in New York; they were married just a few months later. One year after that their son Peter was born in Joe’s native Philadelphia. Joe would continue to lead the development of the Mont Tremblant resort into a world class alpine village (thanks largely to Lowell Thomas’ radio broadcasts from there) before his sudden and tragic death at the age of forty-four after falling twenty-two stories from his New York hotel room on September 12, 1950. He left behind Mary and their two children, Peter and Seddon, as well as three children from an earlier marriage.

It would come as little surprise then that the teenage Peter did not first make the papers as a racing car driver but as a skier and quite a talented one at that. He first took to the slopes as a three-year-old under his father’s watchful eye. In 1957, he won the US National Ski Association’s junior downhill championship at Mount Rose, Nevada, which upset the establishment; being of Canadian upbringing, Ryan’s victory was protested on the grounds that he was ineligible on account of his nationality. However, as both of his parents were Americans who never actually naturalised as Canadians, Peter was legally an American citizen, so the result was allowed to stand. Suddenly it seemed as though young Peter would go all the way to the 1960 Olympics in Squaw Valley. Under the mentorship of legendary Canadian skier Ernie McCulloch, Ryan finished third in the Vermont Olympic Trials in 1959, although he was not entirely comfortable representing the star-spangled banner. He may have been of American parentage with an education from the prestigious Eaglebrook School in Deerfield, Massachussetts and Hotchkiss in Lakeville, Connecticut, but Ryan identified more with the great land north of the border. In an interview with The New York Times he said “To be honest, I would be happier on the Canadian team. The American fellows are great but I grew up with the Canadian skiers.”

Two years on from his New York Times interview, there’s still no doubt over which country Ryan prefers to represent

In the end, Ryan opted not to participate in the Olympics at all for exactly those reasons (though some sources dispute this and make mention of an injury he sustained) and he decided to get his fix for speed elsewhere: motor racing. Ryan began racing at a time when the sport was only truly beginning to find its feet in Canada. Unlike the United States with its by now well-established Indy 500, along with scores of oval tracks and road courses, Canada never quite took to motorsport in the same way and it was only after the Second World War that this really began to change. In a way, the rise of motorsport here was somewhat reminiscent of the similar post-war boom in Britain, with most races being held on airfields, beginning with a small spectator-less sports car meeting held at Abbotsford Airport in 1949. Over the next decade, more airfield circuits would spring up, such as those at Edenvale and Harewood Acres. The nation’s first purpose-built facility, Westwood, was completed in 1959 – the year Peter Ryan made his début as a racing driver – by which point Canadian motorsport had a decent national base and no shortage of enthusiasts.

With the purchase of American racer Bernie Vihl’s Porsche 550, Peter Ryan traded one dangerous sport for another. He took driving lessons from sports car ace John Fitch at Fitch’s own Lime Rock Park circuit, then practiced what he learned on the twisty roads back home on Mont Tremblant. Ryan made his proper entry into motorsport in a Libre event at Green Acres on May 30, 1959, where he over-revved the engine, blowing it up. He was quite upset at this, later recalling “I nearly cried, sitting there watching the other cars go around.” He made up for this somewhat only two weeks later at St. Eugène, where he won in the 1.5-litre class and finished fourth overall. In eight races spread throughout the year Ryan won six in his class, which included two overall second places at Green Acres and Harewood. He also finished second in class in his first endurance race – the inaugural Sundown Grand Prix – a six-hour race at Harewood where he shared his Porsche with Dick Hamilton.

Porsche was impressed by the young Canadian’s speed and gladly sold him a brand new 718 RS 60 for the following year. With additional backing from the Yonge Volkswagen dealership in Toronto, Ryan dominated the Canadian sports car racing season in 1960. Out of twenty events in which Ryan competed that year he won eleven; whenever he didn’t win, it was mainly a result of a lack of experience as opposed to a lack of ability. For example, in the Midsummer Trophy races at Green Acres in July Ryan held on to win the first race after a duel with fellow Porsche RS 60 owner Francis Bradley. In race five he spun out twice in a similar situation. In race eight he won again from Bradley, bringing the lap record down by a full ten miles per hour in the process. A real all-or-nothing character.

That same year, Ryan also made his first appearances south of the border in a number of USAC sports car meetings at Road America, Riverside and Laguna Seca, where he struggled against larger-engined Maseratis, Ferraris and Listers, though in all three he was one of the top finishers in his class; his results among cars with an engine displacement of less than two litres were second, third and fifth respectively. But the key race that put Ryan on the map was actually his first of the year, one that he didn’t even win: The Carling 300 Formula Libre race at Harewood Acres. This event somewhat demonstrated how Canadian motorsport had matured over the previous decade, as it attracted an international presence in the form of Belgian sports car legend Olivier Gendebien. Winner that day was another figure of mythical stature in Roger Penske, though this was long before said stature was attained as America’s most successful team owner. Roger had a tough time holding onto the lead, as he was being pursued uncomfortably closely for the whole race by an eighteen-year-old Canadian: Peter Ryan. They finished first and second (Penske ahead), but Roger was so impressed by his adversary that he agreed to share the former skier’s Porsche in the Sundown Grand Prix, where Penske was the defending winner. The two would remain close friends for the rest of Ryan’s life.

How close was the Ryan-Penske battle? This close

The second annual Sundown Grand Prix was defined by an intense battle between the Ryan/Penske Porsche and a similar model used by Francis Bradley and Ludwig Heimrath. Ryan led for the first six laps before Heimrath found his way in front, where he would remain until about half-distance, spinning while trying to avoid the scene of an accident at the esses. This handed the lead back to Ryan, but Heimrath re-joined, he and his teammate doing their best to regain the lead only to finish a minute down in second. Ultimately, it was the pit stops to change drivers which made the difference, with Ryan’s car spending three minutes in the pit lane when he handed it over to Penske, Heimrath’s taking five minutes when he swapped with Bradley. With Ryan’s victory, Canadian Racing Drivers’ Association president Tommy Gilmour remarked “[Ryan] shows, without qualification, the greatest potential of attaining international status of anyone we’ve ever seen in Canada.”

Ryan garnered more attention the following week at the Watkins Glen International Grand Prix, which was held to Formula Libre, making it something of a precursor to the F1 race that would later put The Glen on the map. With names like Brabham, Moss, Bonnier and Salvadori, and machinery that included F1 cars built by Cooper, Lotus and Connaught, this was a bit more sophisticated than anything young Ryan had experienced before. His own cockpit was that of Bill Sadler’s Formula Libre Special; Sadler was a driver-engineer who has since been hailed as Canada’s own answer to Colin Chapman. His Special, liveried in a patriotic red and white colour scheme, was a rear-engine design fitted with a big 300 bhp Chevrolet engine. Ryan impressively qualified sixth and ran as high as fifth, but unfortunately his Chevy powerplant blew up after fifty-six laps of the hundred-lap event.

Ryan’s 1961 season began with the famous 12 Hours of Sebring, where he shared a Porsche with great rivals Bradley and Heimrath; they took third place in the 1.6-litre sports class. Months later on June 24 would be a historic day in Canadian motorsport, as the first international-level motor race in the country was due to be held on the brand-new Mosport Park circuit in Bowmanville. This was the Player’s 200 and the entry list included the likes of Moss, Gendebien and Bonnier. Sadly, Ryan would not be a participant, despite a Lotus 19 being bought especially for him to race by Comstock Racing, effectively a Canadian national motorsport team set up by cigar-chomping business magnate Chuck Rathgeb. Ryan was forced to withdraw his entry at the last minute after the SCCA – of which he was a member – threatened to ban its drivers due to the fact that starting money was being awarded, thus making it a professional event; the SCCA was strictly an amateur organisation.

The Ryan/Bradley/Heimrath Porsche in action on the famous Sebring airfield

Even if he couldn’t race in the Player’s 200, Ryan got some use out of the Lotus with wins at St. Eugène in July and Mosport in August. He still achieved success elsewhere, nearly winning the Meadowdale Grand Prix at the eponymous Illinois road course in a Sadler Mk V before Penske shunted him from the rear; Ryan spun and had to settle for second place. He also tried his hand at the relatively new Formula Junior category, winning the Vanderbilt Cup at Bridgehampton in a borrowed Lotus 20, which turned a few heads.

The inaugural Canadian Grand Prix was held at Mosport in September. This was not a Formula One race at this time and would not be for another six years; instead, it was held to Canadian Sports Car Championship regulations. This time, the SCCA had no qualms about allowing their drivers into professional events and so Ryan was present in the Lotus 19. He qualified in a superb third place alongside similar UDT Laystall Lotuses driven by Moss and Gendebien. He spent much of proceedings in his starting position while the two more experienced European stars thrillingly swapped the lead twenty-six times. Eventually, both Moss and Gendebien ran into reliability troubles, which handed the lead to Ryan. He had a scare when he made his only mistake of the race by spinning five laps from the end, forcing him to pit for bodywork repairs which took a minute. He emerged behind Pedro Rodríguez’s NART Ferrari and the two young guns battled side-by-side to the line. Ryan completed the hundredth and final lap just a second in front of the Mexican, but what he hadn’t realised was that they weren’t battling for position, he’d lapped the Ferrari! Thus, Peter Ryan became the first Canadian to win an international motor race. It was, needless to say, a popular win. Ryan was mobbed by crowds of ecstatic spectators after the race, and he received a standing ovation at the victory banquet. Chuck Rathgeb later said:

We knew we had one heck of a driver in young Ryan, but we were facing some of the biggest name drivers of the era, people like Stirling Moss and Olivier Gendebien. There was no way we were expected to win. We were ecstatic.

The ecstatic reaction Rathgeb is referring to (photo by Terence Semple)

Formula One

Colin Chapman, ever attentive to whomever was driving his cars, was suitably impressed by Ryan’s Canadian GP victory as well as his earlier win at Bridgehampton. He had an old Lotus 18 shipped over from Britain for Ryan to drive in the upcoming United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen. Peter was “thrilled” in the words of his sister, Seddon Ryan Wylde: “He wanted to go to Europe because he knew that is where the best racing was taking place, and he wanted to see how he could do against the best.” For F1’s first visit to The Glen, Ryan qualified thirteenth, ahead of six other cars, including similar Lotuses driven by Gendebien, Jim Hall and Lloyd Ruby. Race reports say little of Ryan’s performance, with the focus either on the front-runners or on the more unusual incidents, such as Walt Hansgen leaning forward in his Cooper to avoid flames emitting from his Climax engine. What can be said is that Ryan enjoyed another close battle with his good friend Roger Penske, the two separated by only two tenths when they crossed the line eighth and ninth (Roger ahead), four laps down. Chapman found the Canadian to have potential and within hours of the race’s conclusion he made his offer to Peter: A three-year contract with Team Lotus.

Ryan probably didn’t even need to put on this smile for the camera, given that he was about to race in his first world championship Grand Prix

After Formula One

To finish 1961, Ryan raced the Lotus 19 in the Pacific Grand Prix at Laguna Seca. While Moss and Gurney were stealing the show up front, Ryan quietly finished sixth in the first heat and made a tenacious effort to climb from the back of the field in the second heat after a lock-up on the second lap to finish eighth, earning him sixth in the overall classification.

Ryan had hoped to be racing in F1 full-time in 1962, but was disappointed to learn that he would be spending the first year of his Lotus contract in Formula Junior. Chapman saw that Ryan, while in no way lacking in speed, was very prone to rookie errors and felt that he could benefit from a year or two in a lower category before getting a proper bite of the F1 cherry somewhere further down the line. Seddon Ryan Wylde recalls:

He thought he belonged in Formula One. Despite his young age he… thought that Chapman was making him waste a year by not allowing him to run Formula One… It was no doubt a wise decision, but Peter didn’t see it that way. He was very impatient.

But Chapman’s position was clear, for he felt that Ryan

was using his skill to get himself out of dangerous situations… A year or two in Europe would give him experience he could not gain elsewhere. He will then be able to use his experience to keep him out of tight spots and his skill to win races.

Another man whom Ryan had impressed was NART boss Luigi Chinetti, and through him Peter landed a drive in the Daytona 3 Hours, a precursor to the famous 24-hour race that now joins Le Mans and Sebring as part of endurance racing’s informal Triple Crown. Driving a Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa, Ryan competed with fellow rising star Ricardo Rodríguez as his co-driver. Unfortunately, their chances of winning evaporated quickly, as Rodríguez suffered a blow-out early in the race; they finished fifteenth overall and second in class. That was not the end of it though, as he also had a drive with NART for the 12 Hours of Sebring, where – this time partnered with John ‘Buck’ Fulp – he finished third in class in the new Ferrari Dino 248 SP.

While Ryan was racing for NART, he was also waiting for the call from Lotus for his European Formula Junior début. Unfortunately, the works team was all booked up, so Ryan was loaned to the semi-works Ian Walker Racing Team. Walker himself was quite happy to have such a hot prospect in his outfit, saying “If Colin thought highly of him, that was good enough for me. It was obvious that Peter had great talent from our very first test with him but he would throw caution to the wind.” Ryan would receive a shock when his brand-new Lotus 22 arrived unassembled, as Chapman firmly believed that his drivers should know their cars inside and out. Nevertheless, Peter put the pieces together in two weeks and he was finally ready to take on the best young talents in Europe.

His European début was not in a Formula Junior race but at the 1000 km Nürburgring in May, where he shared an Ian Walker Lotus 23 with Paul Hawkins; they lasted twenty-six laps before overheating stopped them in their tracks. Only a week later, Ryan finally got his FJ début in the Monaco Grand Prix support race, impressively winning his heat by half a second from the works Lotus of Alan Rees. He started the final on the front row alongside Peter Arundell and ran in second place before he bent a wishbone on one of the high kerbs; he limped home in eleventh. Ryan made up for his Monaco errors with a storming performance a little over a week later in another F1 support race, this time for the non-championship International 2000 Guineas at Mallory Park. He spent twenty-eight of the thirty laps on Arundell’s tail, before a calculated move on the penultimate lap allowed him to win, also coming within 1.5 seconds of the F1 lap record set by John Surtees that same weekend! Not a bad way to celebrate his twenty-second birthday, which occurred the day before the race.

Ryan leads the pack up Beau Rivage

Two weeks later, Ryan made his Le Mans début with NART. Reunited with Buck Fulp, they shared a Testa Rossa, when fifteen hours and one-hundred-and-fifty laps into the race Ryan – in the midst of an enthralling battle with Ricardo Rodríguez and struggling with a faulty gearbox – entered the Mulsanne hairpin at too high a speed and ploughed into the sandbank at fifty miles per hour. Refusing surrender, he spent a rather worrying amount of time (a few hours by some reports!) trying in vain to dig the Ferrari out, before reluctantly walking back to the pits.

Ryan’s next Formula Junior race was to be the Coupe Internationale de Vitesse des Juniors in support of the Reims Grand Prix on the famous high-speed French circuit. In the first heat, which began at 10 am, Ryan fought an exciting duel with Bill Moss’ Gemini and Frank Gardner’s Brabham, but disaster struck on lap five and, this being an era before mandatory seatbelts, there would be dire consequences. Ryan and Moss tangled at the tricky right hander that marked the first turn of the circuit; Ryan’s car was flipped over and he was thrown out. Moss was lucky to escape with only minor injuries, but Ryan sustained a broken leg, a crushed hip and he was knocked unconscious. In hospital in Paris, medical authorities said that it would be “touch and go” whether he would live through the night. He did, but after thirty hours in a coma he eventually succumbed to his injuries.

Peter Ryan’s death sent a shockwave through the Canadian motorsport community, Chuck Rathgeb stating “It’ll be a long time before the sport sees another man of his calibre again.” Indeed, it would be a full fifteen years before the similarly tragic figure of Gilles Villeneuve would succeed Ryan as Canada’s gift to the F1 world. Canadian motorsport historian David A. Charters later summed Peter Ryan up as a “natural, untutored, undisciplined talent. At the top ranks of the racing world, that could take a driver only so far.” Writing for Autocar, Peter Garnier said “During his all-too-brief spell on British and Continental circuits, he had proved himself to be extremely skillful and fast, with just that touch of fire which can often indicate the makings of a great driver.” Formula Junior rival Frank Gardner called him “the fastest driver I saw”. Peter Ryan is now buried alongside both of his parents in the cemetery of the St. Bernard Chapel in Mont Tremblant.

With tributes like these and with such an impressive record built up in the space of just three years it looks as though Peter Ryan certainly had the raw talent to become Canada’s first motor racing superstar long before Gilles Villeneuve captured people’s imaginations with his similarly fearless style. The thought that Ryan, with a healthy Formula Junior experience, could realistically have been a worthy partner of Jim Clark in the invincible Lotus team of the mid-1960s makes it all the more tragic that he was taken from life at such an early age. He is still remembered in the motorsport community of the country he called home and he was one of the inaugural inductees of the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame in 1993. The Circuit Mont-Tremblant, built in 1964 to attract more summer visitors to the resort and to offer a home for motorsport in Quebec, is also dedicated to Ryan’s memory, and its branch of the Jim Russell Racing School has allowed drivers of a similar age to him (including such talented Canadians as the Villeneuves, Greg Moore and Bertrand Fabi) to hone their abilities to perfection before taking on the world stage. The circuit is of course now owned by Lawrence Stroll, father of F1 débutant Lance. Fitting, then, that Lance Stroll has a fire within him that burns just as brightly as that within Pete Ryan, whose flame was extinguished too soon.

Throughout Formula One’s rich history, over 800 drivers have entered a World Championship Grand Prix. Despite the success of European competitors, only five have been Portuguese. The first was Casimiro de Oliveira, who entered the 1958 Portuguese Grand Prix at Boavista, but withdrew on safety grounds. He was part of the organisation for the event, and was the brother of one of Portugal’s most famous film directors (as well as being a racing driver himself) Manoel de Oliveira.

A year later, Mário de Araújo Cabral entered the Portuguese Grand Prix for Scuderia Centro Sud, using a Cooper T51. He qualified second last, ahead of a certain Graham Hill, and finished in 10th place which would remain his best Formula One result; in his other entries, he failed to qualify for the 1963 Italian Grand Prix, and retired in the rest: the 1960 Portuguese Grand Prix, 1963 German Grand Prix and 1964 Italian Grand Prix. Since Casimiro never actually raced in 1958, Araújo Cabral was the first Portuguese driver to start a Grand Prix.

He remained the only one until 1993. Pedro Chaves attempted to be the next, but was driving the ill-fated Coloni C4, which never passed pre-qualifying throughout the entire 1991 season. Then came the 1993 Italian Grand Prix, and two rookies were on the grid; one was driving for Jordan, replacing the retiring Thierry Boutsen. His name was Marco Apicella, and his record in Formula One is well known as the shortest ever Formula One career, lasting from his grid spot (23rd on the grid) to the Variante del Rettifilo before getting collected in a collision that took out another 4 cars.

The other rookie was Pedro Lamy, the second Portuguese driver to start a Grand Prix.

Early Life

José Pedro Mourão Lamy Viçoso was born in 20th of March 1972 in Alenquer, Portugal. In his formative years, the young Lamy showed interest in things that went fast. At the start of his racing career, Pedro Lamy took part in racing mini bikes and mini motocross. Throughout 1977, age 5, and 1981, age 9, Lamy won 4 times both the Portuguese Mini-Motocross Championship and the Portuguese Mini-Bikes Championship. Between 1981 and 1985, he tried a different type of racing: go-karts. Both in 1985 and 1986, Lamy finished 2nd in the Portuguese National Championship, before winning it in 1987 and 1988.

By now, Lamy seemed to show that he was ready to take it up a notch, and in 1989, he graduated to the Portuguese Formula Ford Championship. Taking 3 wins throughout the season, Lamy won the title in its first attempt. He also found himself a manager in Domingos Piedade, who had previously worked as manager for Fittipaldi, Senna and Alboreto. Piedade found the rising Portuguese star a drive in the European Formula Opel where, together with Diogo Castro Santos, he won the Nations Cup and finished 10th in the standings, scoring 30 points in his debut year. Changing teams from Derek Bell’s racing squad to Draco Racing meant he stayed another year in Formula Opel, and after winning the Nations Cup again with Diogo Castro Santos (also his main rival for the title), he scored 184 points across the season (23 more than Diogo) to win his first title outside Portugal. Over the fifteen races he won four times, scored four pole positions and four fastest laps, as well as taking ten podiums. Through every category Lamy had raced, he had won a title.

Lamy in German F3, on his way to the title.

For 1992 Lamy signed for the Opel Team WTS in German F3, and in his first year in the series he dominated. In 26 races he won 11 times, finished on the podium 18 times, got 12 pole positions and 8 fastest laps. He scored an incredible 340 points across the year, 47 more than Marco Werner who finished in 2nd place, 72 more than 3rd placed driver, Sascha Maasen. Despite a retirement in the Monaco F3 Trophy which was won by his German F3 rival Marco Werner, the other two main F3 trophies yielded better results; at the Macau GP, Lamy finished 2nd behind Swedish ace Rickard Rydell, but ahead of future Formula One Champion Jacques Villeneuve. In the Masters of F3 at Zandvoort, he took victory ahead of fellow countryman Diogo Castro Santos and Brazilian Gil de Ferran.

International F3000 (1993)

After Formula Three, Lamy decided to graduate to F1’s main feeder series at the time, International Formula 3000. He signed for the Crypton Engineering squad, which the year before had taken Italian driver Luca Badoer to the title, who had just graduated to Formula One with the BMS Scuderia Italia team. Alongside Lamy, starting the season was Italian driver Guido Knycz, who later got replaced by Frenchman Nicolas Leboisettier. Despite Leboisettier finishing in 4th place at the second last round of the championship at Magny- Cours, none of his team-mates posed any threat to Lamy across the year. Qualifying 4th in his F3000 debut, Lamy finished in 2nd place in his debut, being beaten by the Monegasque driver Olivier Beretta. At Silverstone, in the second race, he qualified 6th, but he failed to start the race. A pole and victory followed at Pau, before the weekend at Enna-Pergusa came.

Enna-Pergusa, a high-speed circuit located on the island of Sicily, hosted the 4th round of the F3000 season. Pole position went to Michael Bartels ahead of his team-mate David Coulthard, while Lamy qualified in 4th place. Lamy passed Beretta and climbed into 3rd place and set to work chasing after the leading cars of the Pacific Racing squad. At the end of the 5th lap, Yvan Muller crashed at the final corner and destroyed his car, which was left standing in the grass just besides the track despite the risk it posed to the other competitors. This resulted in disaster, as Spanish driver Jordi Gené lost control of his car coming through the final corner and crashed into the stranded car of Muller. The red flag was displayed, and the race was restarted using the order of the last lap before the crash (lap 11).

Watch: Highlights of the Enna-Pergusa round of the 1993 F3000 championship.

Lamy jumped Coulthard on the start and began the chase on Bartels, who then made a mistake and spun into the wall and retirement, which allowed Lamy to take the lead. A mistake by Lamy made Coulthard close the gap and with two laps to go, Coulthard passed Lamy into the final chicane before he suddenly braked midway through the chicane, with Lamy touching the rear of the Pacific car and damaging his front wing. Somehow, Lamy thought he had won and started celebrating! Coulthard passed Lamy as they entered the final lap, and as if these last two laps weren’t already enough, Lamy made one final mistake; into the final corner and without full use of downforce, he lost control of his Reynard chassis and went into the tyre barrier, retiring on the final lap. Six points were lost, and they would be vital come the championship end.

A three race victory streak for Olivier Panis saw him distance away a little in the title fight; during that time, Lamy achieved a 2nd and pole position at Hockenheim, and two fourth places and the fastest laps at the Nürburgring and at Spa. After qualifying a lowly 8th at France, he raced to 3rd place at the end while Panis retired, and they entered the final round split by just a single point: 32 points to Panis, 31 to Lamy. Whilst Panis qualified in 2nd place, Lamy qualified a shocking 12th and during the race never seemed like troubling even the minor points, coming home a disappointing 16th place. Panis retired from the race, but because Lamy failed to trouble the scorers Panis won the title. Lamy’s mistakes at Enna-Pergusa and a shocking final race at Nogaro had cost him the title.

Lamy’s drop in performance in the final two rounds might have been explained through lack of motivation, as before those two races, he had made his Formula One debut at Monza for Castrol Team Lotus.

Formula One (1993-1996)

1993

The history behind Lotus’ final years is well known. A shadow of the glory days and a husk of the team Colin Chapman started back in 1959, Lotus’ last few seasons were plagued by financial troubles. Their solution? Pay-drivers, of course. Between 1990 and 1994, the team’s final years in Formula One, multiple pay-drivers were employed: Julian Bailey, Michael Bartels, Alessandro Zanardi, Philippe Adams, Éric Bernard and Mika Salo. They also employed Johnny Herbert and Mika Häkkinen, who scored many of the team’s points during this years. In fact, between 1991 and 1994 only two of the 28 points Lotus scored did not come from either Häkkinen or Herbert; Zanardi scored one and Bailey earned the other.

While some of those pay-drivers definitely had talent (like Zanardi and Salo), others like Bailey and Adams were clearly there only for their money. Which category does Lamy fit? Judging from his junior career before coming to Formula One, Lamy promised to have a fair bit of talent. But it was of course money – and connections to Domingos Piedade and Ayrton Senna, who befriended Lamy – that helped him secure a drive at the 1993 Italian Grand Prix, after Zanardi was sidelined due to a crash at Spa the previous weekend.

Lamy in his first appearance for Lotus at Monza, 1993.

Qualifying didn’t go very well for Pedro. While his team-mate Herbert was in the crazy heights of 7th place, 2.5 seconds behind the Williams of Prost, Lamy was dead last, a whopping 2.6 seconds behind his team-mate, and 5.1 behind Prost. Following the start-line fracas, Lamy actually gained two places and finished lap 1 ahead of Fittipaldi and Alliot. Despite a poor qualifying, Lamy did a fairly good job in race day. He started to come through the order, and midway through the race had moved safely into the top 10, running in 9th. Before he retired due to electrical problems with just 4 laps to go, Lamy was running 10th after getting passed by Fittipaldi, who would then collect his team-mate Martini just come the finish line of the final lap of the race, being sent into a backflip over the finish line! Despite a poor qualifying, Lamy’s race pace was at least encouraging.

Lamy takes to the Estoril track in his first home Grand Prix. (Getty/Schlegelmilch)

Next up was the Portuguese Grand Prix, Lamy’s home race. Only the third Portuguese driver to be entered in a Grand Prix, and only the second to start it, Lamy had home support. Qualifying was at least an improvement compared to Italy. Herbert qualified in 14th place, 3.6 seconds down on Damon Hill, while Lamy was 18th fastest, just 0.8 seconds behind Johnny. Once again, Lamy made a great start, and ended lap 1 in 15th place, two places behind his team-mate. Lamy would run as high as 10th during the race, before dropping to 13th place and then climbing back to 11th. There, on lap 61, Lamy made a mistake and spun into retirement.

So far, Lamy had not managed to light the world on fire, but at least he got assured he would be finishing the season with the British squad. At the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka the Lotus struggled for pace, and Herbert and Lamy were down in 19th and 20th respectively, with only one tenth separating them. Lamy and Herbert didn’t make much progress during race day, with Herbert running as high as 11th in one point of the race because of a strategy call, while Lamy ran close to the rear of the field. Despite that, after Herbert’s pitstop from 11th he came out just one place ahead of Lamy, who eventually found himself running ahead of his team-mate with 3 laps to go before misfortune struck the Portuguese driver. When coming out of Dunlop Curve, Lamy lost control of his Lotus 107 and crashed hard into the wall. The car was totalled, and Lamy was out and lost a valuable chance of beating his team-mate. Herbert would cross the finish line in 11th place, and Lamy would be classified in 13th.

Watch: Lamy’s incident at the 1993 Japanese Grand Prix.

The 1993 season finale was up next, and with both titles handed to the Williams team, it was all a matter of seeing who would win the race. Prost was retiring, and Senna – his former nemesis at McLaren – grabbed pole ahead of the already crowned world champion. Herbert was 20th, 4 seconds down. Lamy was 1.9 seconds slower than his team-mate in 23rd place. After some decent enough performances, Lamy was back to square one, getting soundly beaten by his team-mate over a lap.

Would Lamy improve come race day, like he had done before? He didn’t get the chance, as his race lasted an entire first corner, before a touch from Katayama sent him airborne (an incident similar to the Maldonado/Gutierrez collision at the 2014 British Grand Prix), and the suspension on the Lotus was broken. He did a lazy spin trying to accelerate coming out of the first corner, and retired on the spot. Lamy’s debut season in Formula One had come to a very disappointing end after four mostly unimpressive performances. Even so, his money was clearly helpful and despite the indifferent performances shown in late 1993, Lamy was signed by Lotus for a full season in 1994. Lotus once again brought an updated 107 chassis, dubbed the 107C, before introducing the 108 later on the season. His team-mate would, once again, be Johnny Herbert.

Lotus knew how deep in trouble they were. The 107 was now essentially a three year old design, and it was long past its competitive edge. 1994 would be their last year.

1994

For 1994, Scuderia Italia left Formula One, and two new teams joined: Simtek and Pacific. With 28 cars now competing for the 26 places on the grid, two of them wouldn’t qualify for the race. With its aging design, it was a big question if Lotus could qualify for races. The concerns turned out to be unfounded, as the Pacific design turned out to be completely hopeless and so Lotus were largely safe, despite some troubles from Simtek early on the season.

Retained by Lotus for 1994, Lamy races the 107C at Interlagos. (Pascal Rondeau)

The season opener came at Interlagos, the 1994 Brazilian Grand Prix. Ayrton Senna, now driving for Williams, started on pole, while the Lotus were 3.5 and 4 seconds down respectively. Herbert outqualified Lamy once again, 21st to 24th place. Herbert came through the field to run as high as 8th place, while Lamy was running all race behind his team-mate. Through retirements, Herbert came home in 7th place, just one place away from points, while Lamy managed 10th albeit a full lap down on his team-mate. The 1994 season began for Lamy just as 1993 ended: getting comprehensively beaten by Herbert, and making himself no favours in F1. Next on the agenda was the Pacific Grand Prix, and the Lotus were stranded only ahead of the Simteks (but only just ahead of Brabham, who was one tenth away) and the hopeless Pacific squad. Herbert was 23rd, 4.2 seconds behind Senna, and Lamy was just behind in 24th, 0.2 seconds away from his team-mate. Lamy made a decent start and ran ahead of Herbert until lap 29. The two Lotuses would trade places again, and Herbert would come home in 7th place again with Lamy one place behind in 8th, but again a lap down on his team-mate. So, while the 107C was not competitive, it somewhat made up for it by running reliably.

Then came one of the darkest weekends in the history of Formula One: the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, held at Imola. The history of this weekend is known by most motorsport fans.

Lamy, sadly, became part of the history of the weekend, which started badly when Rubens Barrichello’s Jordan crashed hard in Friday qualifying at the Variante Bassa corner. Then came the Saturday session, and the weekend took a turn for the worse when the front wing on Roland Ratzenberger’s Simtek failed coming through the fast Villeneuve corner. The Simtek went straight into the barrier, and the impact was deadly. Qualifying continued with great sadness, and Senna was once again on pole position, with the Lotus in 20th and 22nd, with Herbert ahead of Lamy again, split by 2 tenths.

Lamy in his stricken Lotus, Imola ’94. He collided with the stalled Benetton of Lehto, bringing out the safety car. (F1-Photo.com)

Sunday’s race continued as normal, and the lights were green at San Marino where the Benetton of JJ Lehto, who qualified in 5th place, stalled on the grid. Lamy did not see the stopped Benetton on the race track, and careened straight into the back of the Benetton rear end. The bodywork that flew from the crash went into the crowd, and 9 people suffered minor injuries. Due to the crash the safety car was deployed, leading the race until lap 4, when it came in. On lap 5, coming into Tamburello, Ayrton Senna’s Williams veered left into the concrete wall at roughly 300km/h. The red flag was brought out immediately, and the race was stopped. After the race was resumed, Berger took the lead, but it was Schumacher who won the race, ahead of Larini (in his first podium in Formula One) and Häkkinen. Two hours and 20 minutes after the race was over, 3 time World Champion Ayrton Senna was pronounced dead, and the whole world of Formula One was left in shock by the events at Imola that weekend. Lamy, a close friend of Senna’s, was shaken by the whole ordeal – and it wasn’t just because of his crash.

But the world of Formula One got shaken again at the next race, at the Principality of Monaco. During the first free practice session of the weekend, Sauber driver Karl Wendlinger crashed hard at the Nouvelle Chicane, and was left in a coma for several weeks; the Sauber team elected to not take part during the rest of the weekend, which meant that every car would qualify for the race. Herbert outqualified Lamy once again with the Brit managing 16th fastest in qualifying, with Lamy in 19th place, 1.4 seconds down on Herbert. A chaotic first lap resulted in Martini, Morbidelli, Hill and Häkkinen retiring. Despite this, Lamy found himself running only in 18th place by the end of lap, gaining one place despite the retirements as he was passed by Bernard, Brabham and Panis. Herbert, on the contrary, was 11th; with overtaking being notoriously difficult around the Monaco circuit, it wasn’t going to be an easy afternoon for Lamy.

During the entire race, Lamy only ran ahead of the Pacifics of Gachot and Belmondo, eventually being the last classified finisher in 11th place, five laps down on Schumacher, and two full laps down on the next classified driver, Érik Comas. Herbert ran as high as 8th place during the race, and was running 9th when the gearbox failed him. Some say Monaco is the track where driver’s real skill is shown; if true, then Lamy’s race didn’t do him any favours for his reputation, and his junior record wasn’t helping him in F1 whatsoever. He was hardly disgracing himself, but in all the races he did for Lotus between 1993 and 1994, he got outqualified by Herbert, and only in one race he ran more competitively than Herbert.

Despite having signed for the entire season for Lotus, Lamy’s season ended during a private test in Silverstone, where Lamy was testing some new parts for the car to meet the new the safety regulations that were introduced after Imola. In an ironic twist of fate, the rear spoiler of his Lotus failed and Lamy crashed hard at Abbey, breaking both legs and both wrists. He was sidelined for well over a year; by the time he had recovered from his injuries, Team Lotus was no more. Lamy was able to return to Formula One midway through 1995, when another backmarker squad in need of money hired him to replace the departing Pierluigi Martini: Minardi.

1995

One of the bigger questions after a heavy injury is whether a driver can return to full fitness and be as competitive as before. After a series of operations and physio sessions, Lamy clambered back behind the wheel when he tested for Minardi in late 1994, eventually returning to racing mid-season for the team in 1995.

The Minardi 1995 chassis is perhaps a great example of a well-designed chassis, but hindered by an underpowered engine. For the new season, Minardi signed a contract with Mugen Honda to supply them with engines which the new M195 was designed around. But before the season opener at Brazil came along, Flavio Briatore convinced Mugen to supply his recently-acquired team Ligier instead, leaving Minardi with no engine contract for 1995. Minardi had to buy the old and gutless Ford ED V8 engine and had to quickly alter the chassis to fit the new engine. Having expected a power disadvantage, Minardi enlisted Magneti Marelli to improve the engine management systems.

Now at Minardi, Lamy navigates the Spa-Francorchamps circuit.

Lamy’s debut came at a circuit where horsepower wasn’t very important: the Hungaroring. His team-mate was the 1992 International F3000 champion Italian Luca Badoer, who after a troubled debut in 1993 with Lola, returned in 1995 with Minardi. Badoer showed the car was competitive around the Hungaroring, putting the car in 12th on the grid, with Lamy three places behind in 15th. Lamy dropped a place at the start, but by lap 22, had caught and passed his team-mate. Despite that, Badoer repassed Lamy and finished in 8th place at the end, with the Portuguese driver a lap behind him in 9th. Lamy’s return to Formula One was startlingly similar to his performance before his injury; he was outqualified and outraced, finishing a lap down on his team-mate. At Spa-Francorchamps, Lamy outqualified his team-mate for the first time in his career, putting his Minardi in 17th while Badoer was 19th. The 1995 Belgian Grand Prix is remembered as a typical “Regenmeister” drive by Michael Schumacher in the wet, but further down the field, Lamy ran the entire race ahead of Badoer until the Italian retired after crashing out. Lamy came home 10th, on the same lap as the leaders, and just 13 seconds behind Olivier Panis in the Ligier with the Mugen Honda engine Minardi should have used in 1995. This was arguably Lamy’s best drive in Formula One so far, and at a track where driver talent is showcased, especially in such tough and changing conditions.

At Minardi’s home race at Monza, Badoer and Lamy qualified 19th and 20th respectively. Monza, being a power circuit, severely hampered the underpowered Minardis. Lamy’s race didn’t last a lap, retiring with a transmission failure, while Badoer crashed out in lap 26. The next race was Lamy’s second start at his home grand prix, held at Estoril. He qualified 17th, outqualifying Badoer again, who was one place behind in 18th. Sadly, his race didn’t last long. On lap 7, his Minardi broke down when it suffered a gearbox failure.

In the next three consecutive Grands Prix, Lamy qualified 16th at the European Grand Prix, where he finished two places ahead of his team-mate in 9th, 14th at the Pacific Grand Prix, where he finished two places again ahead of Badoer in 13th and 17th at the Japanese Grand Prix, finishing in 11th, two places behind his team-mate who had run as high as 7th during the race.

Then came the season finale, the 1995 Australian Grand Prix. Schumacher had already won his second consecutive world title, and during practice for the race, the world of F1 was shaken again, as McLaren driver Mika Häkkinen suffered a puncture while entering the Brewery Bend, causing him to crash dramatically. An emergency tracheotomy was performed on site, which saved Mika. He would, of course, not start the race. For the first time in 3 races, Lamy was outqualified by Badoer and would start 17th, but Badoer wouldn’t start the race. During the formation lap, the gearbox on the Minardi failed and Badoer would be unable to take 15th on the grid for what would be one of Formula One’s craziest Grands Prix.

As the race got underway, cars started to drop out. Montermini’s gearbox failed in his Pacific-Ford and was followed to the garages by Karl Wendlinger, who had been brought by Sauber to race at Japan and at Adelaide. The Austrian suffered from a lack of fitness following his Monaco crash the previous year, and retired from fatigue. Then Taki Inoue, true to character, spun off.

Afterwards came perhaps two of the most embarrassing moments in Formula One. On lap 19 out of the 81 that was to be run, the leading Coulthard (who had stolen the lead from his team-mate, polesitter Damon Hill) came into the pitlane too fast, locked up his tyres, and ploughed into the pitwall! To further increase his embarrassment, he claimed he had over-revved his engine which had made him lose control. Two laps later, Roberto Moreno performed a carbon copy of Coulthard’s faux pas and was out as well. People must have started thinking if that pitlane entrance was cursed.

Lamy at Adelaide, 1995. This was where he claimed his first and only world championship point.

By now, Lamy was running already in 13th place, and by lap 21 only 17 cars were still in the race. During the next 10 laps, Jean Alesi, Michael Schumacher and Martin Brundle crashed out, while Gerhard Berger suffered an engine failure. These events promoted Lamy to 11th place, who then passed Katayama on track before climbing to 9th when Frentzen retired with a gearbox failure. Lamy then passed and got repassed by Salo fighting for 7th place, with the Finn prevailing. The attrition continued and two of the drivers running ahead of Lamy retired; Irvine suffered an engine failure in lap 62 and his erstwhile team-mate Herbert was plagued by a transmission problem in lap 69. Katayama was the last man to retire on lap 70, and despite being three laps down on Damon Hill (who was in turn 2 laps ahead of everyone else), Pedro Lamy was running in the points! He held on to finish in 6th place, scoring Minardi’s only point of the season and the first ever point for a Portuguese driver in Formula One. Lamy’s race wasn’t without an embarrassing moment though; while running in 13th place, Lamy half-spun, and when he tried to rejoin the track, he spun again! However, this was the only blot on his copybook that afternoon.

Watch: Lamy’s twin-spin en route to a point at the 1995 Australian Grand Prix.

1996

Lamy’s performances over the last part of 1995 guaranteed him a contract extension at Minardi for 1996, where the team used an updated version of the previous year’s chassis, dubbed the M195B. This was again powered by the Ford ED V8 engine, so power was clearly still a problem for the new season. Lamy would have three team-mates throughout the year: young Italian Giancarlo Fisichella, young Brazilian Tarso Marques and Italian “gentleman driver” Giovanni Lavaggi.

The first race of the year took place in Australia, the same country where 1995 had ended. Instead of the now-customary Adelaide venue, F1 would race at Melbourne for the first time. Jacques Villeneuve was on pole position in his first race for Williams in Formula One, with the 1995 Indy 500 winner impressing first-time out. While both Fortis failed to qualify for the race thanks to the newly introduced 107% rule, the Minardi’s lined up 16th and 17th, Fisichella ahead of Lamy. They both made good starts, and by the end of lap 1, Lamy was 15th and Fisichella 13th. Despite that, Lamy struggled during the race. By lap 9, he was running in last, where he stayed until he retired due to a problem with his safety belt. It was no means to start his season, but “Fisi” couldn’t do much better. After his good start, he eventually found himself just 1 position ahead of Lamy, retiring a few laps before Lamy due to a clutch failure.

Lamy put in a strong performance at Interlagos in ’96, running strongly before retiring. (LAT)

At Interlagos, Marques replaced Fisichella, and Lamy outqualified the Brazilian who failed to set a time. Lamy was last of the cars that set a time besides the glacial Fortis, coming in 1.1 seconds slower than Ricardo Rosset. Marques showed his inexperience as he spun off during the first lap, while Lamy made a special start, and was running 11th at the end of the first lap! That didn’t last long though, and by the time they came through Junção at the end of the second lap, he was back in 20th as Ukyo Katayama had sent him into a spin. Due to the retirements across the race, Lamy eventually finished the race in 10th place, 3 laps down on Damon Hill. At the next race at Buenos Aires (in which Pedro Diniz flipped Luca Badoer before subsequently catching fire) Lamy qualified 19th for the race, a whopping 5 places behind Tarso Marques, but while Marques retired from a collision on the 33rd lap while running in 12th place, Lamy climbed through the field and before Marques retired, found himself ahead of his team-mate, eventually retiring on lap 39 due to a transmission failure.

The European Grand Prix marked F1’s first foray into Europe in 1996, and Fisichella had returned as Lamy’s team-mate. They qualified 18th and 19th, with the Italian outqualifying Lamy again, although the Portuguese driver ran most of the race ahead of Fisichella, both eventually being the last two classified runners in the race in 12th and 13th. Imola marked Lamy’s first foray into the circuit since the events of 1994, and he outqualified Fisichella for the first time, 18th to 19th. Lamy ran the early part of the race ahead of Fisichella, but the Italian overhauled him before retiring on lap 30 due to an engine failure. Lamy came home in 9th place, 2 laps down on the winner.

The next race was the 1996 Monaco Grand Prix, known as one of the most memorable races of the modern age of Formula One. Lamy was outqualified by Fisichella on a track where the sleek M195B chassis could have been at least competitive, but the fact it was now over one year old showed. Lamy began 19th, with Fisichella just ahead in 18th. In a race held in changing conditions and littered with accidents and mechanical failures, only three cars crossed the finish line; Olivier Panis took an unlikely victory in his Ligier, becoming the last French driver to win a Grand Prix in a French car. He came home five seconds ahead of David Coulthard and thirty-eight ahead of Lamy’s former team-mate Johnny Herbert. Five cars retired on lap one alone, including both Minardis and world champion Michael Schumacher, now driving for Ferrari. Katayama, Rosset, Diniz, Berger, Brundle, Hill, Badoer, Alesi and Villeneuve all retired, while Irvine, Häkkinen and Salo were all classified despite not having finished the race.

Lamy rounds the hairpin at Montreal in ’96.

The 1996 Spanish Grand Prix was next, and the race was held under torrential rain. Lamy outqualified Fisichella, 18th to 19th (positions the Minardis were quite familiar with throughout its history in Formula One), but on race day, it was Schumacher’s epic drive in the rain that stole all headlines, finishing a mammoth 45 seconds ahead of Alesi and Villeneuve. Lamy’s race didn’t last one lap; he collided with Ricardo Rosset and was out. Fisichella’s race lasted one more lap until he also crashed, colliding with Olivier Panis. The Canadian Grand Prix saw Fisichella qualify 16th, outqualifying Lamy by three places. Lamy made a poor start and found himself running in last place by the end of the first lap, behind the Fortis. Lamy passed both Forti drivers, and eventually found himself ahead of Fisichella, before getting passed again by the Italian and subsequently retiring on lap 44. Fisichella finished in 8th place, just two places adrift from scoring points. At the French Grand Prix, Fisichella continued to outqualify Lamy, 17th to 18th on the grid. Fisichella’s race lasted just two laps before he was forced to retire with a fuel pump issue, while Lamy was the last classified driver in 12th. Lamy’s performances were worrying, and spent most of the race running behind the Forti of Badoer.

The British Grand Prix proved to be the last time the Fortis would show up to a race, and thereafter the grid was decreased to just 20 cars. Rosset didn’t set a time in qualifying, and Lamy got outqualified by Fisichella once again. Until he retired from a gearbox failure, Lamy spent the majority of the race in last place behind Fisichella, who would finish in 11th place.

The long blast through the forests at Hockenheim followed, and the Minardi chassis/engine combination struggled thanks to the underpowered Ford V8 engine stuck in the back of the M195B. Lamy found himself with a brand new team-mate: Italian nobleman Giovanni Lavaggi, nicknamed “Johnny Carwash” within the paddock, who in 1995 had done 4 races with Pacific, qualifying last in three of them, and second-last in the other. Lavaggi’s junior career was not impressive at all. In the 1991 season of F3000, he failed to qualify for all but two races, grabbing a best result of 12th place in the final season of the race at Nogaro. His biggest career result until this point in time was finishing 7th overall and second in his class at the 1992 24 Hours of Le Mans, driving a Porsche 962CK6 together with Manuel Reuter and John Nielsen.

Lavaggi proved no match to Pedro Lamy, and showed he was only there because of his money. In his first outing with Minardi, Lavaggi failed to qualify by around two-tenths of a second (he was outside the 107% range of the pole time), a massive 1.9 seconds slower than Lamy on a track where a car’s performance was much more important than driving talent. Lamy although only qualified ahead of the Footwork of Ricardo Rosset. A poor start from Katayama saw Lamy climb into 16th and then into 15th as Panis made a mistake on lap 2. Lamy, despite falling to last at one point, found himself then running ahead of the Sauber of Herbert and the Jordan of Brundle, but while Herbert retired, Brundle naturally passed Lamy on track to bump him down to last. He finished in 12th place, the only man who was two laps down on race winner Damon Hill.

The year before, Hungary had proven to be the track where the Minardi performed the best, but the aging chassis couldn’t match its more advanced counterparts around the twisty Hungaroring circuit, located on the outskirts of Budapest. Both Minardis locked out the last row of the grid, with Lamy outqualifying Lavaggi by almost a full second. Lamy ran the entire race in second last, only ahead of Lavaggi, until he retired on lap 24 from a suspension problem. Lavaggi was classified in 10th place, where he was running, before he spun off on lap 69 out of 77.

Spa-Francorchamps saw the gap increase once again between the Minardi team-mates, but they were both the slowest again, with Lavaggi an incredible 1.8 seconds off Lamy’s time, who himself was almost half a second slower than Rosset; the Italian failed to qualify for the second time in three races. A collision at La Source in the first lap, a sight fairly synonymous with Spa-Francorchamps, put Panis and the two Saubers of Herbert and Frentzen out of the race, as Barrichello touched Irvine and was forced to pit for repairs, and was running last. Lamy emerged from the chaos in 15th place before finding himself ahead of Rosset and Diniz (and even in some points ahead of Damon Hill and Gerhard Berger). However, the Footwork driver passed Lamy, and the Portuguese finished in 10th place, a lap down on the Ferrari of Schumacher.

In the Italian Grand Prix, Lavaggi at least qualified, but once again was slowest on the grid, almost a full second down on Lamy, who was 18th on the grid, ahead of the Footwork of Rosset. Lamy lost a place to Rosset on the start, and at the end of lap 2 was running behind Lavaggi which he would continue to do for 4 entire laps! Lavaggi retired in the lap Lamy passed him, as his Ford V8 cried enough. Lamy was in 12th place – running ahead of Katayama – at the time when he retired, where he also suffered an engine failure.

Estoril, ’96. Lamy takes part in his final home race.

Next up was Lamy’s home race at Estoril. The Minardis were once again slowest in qualifying with Lamy 1.1 seconds ahead of Lavaggi, and 4 seconds down on the pole time of Damon Hill. Amazingly, he ran the entire race behind his team-mate Giovanni Lavaggi; both cars finished 5 laps down in 15th and 16th. It was the only time Lavaggi finished ahead of a team-mate when both finished, and at his Portuguese team-mate’s home race. Lamy knew his time in Formula One was coming to an end with performances like this.

The final race of the year came, and Damon Hill was crowned Formula One World Champion for the only time in his career, becoming the first ever son of a champion to become himself World Champion. Lavaggi was 1.9 seconds slower than Lamy on qualifying, and received another “DNQ” to his name, while Lamy was 18th fastest, ahead of Rosset. He ran the entire race ahead of Rosset, and finished what would be his final race in Formula One in 12th place, two laps down on Damon Hill.

To no one’s surprise, Lamy’s contract was not renewed for 1997, but he himself was relieved to it. According to Lamy:

“[I was] bored with Formula One, and I didn’t want to continue to there. I wanted to enjoy my life again, so I found a new chance to do that in GT racing.”

It’s a mystery to why Lamy did not perform to the level he did back in junior racing. Was he always bored with Formula One? He did show some signs of having potential across the three years he raced in the world’s top single seaters series, and it’s a big question to how much the crash at Silverstone in 1994 hampered him. Panis’ crash in 1997 is usually an example of a discussion of an injury creating an impact to a driver’s skill, and it can be argued that Lamy’s crash was even worse than Panis’, and he took a longer time to recover compared to Olivier. Still, Lamy can be proud of being the first ever Portuguese driver to score points in Formula One, a feat that was only matched by Tiago Monteiro in 2005.

After Formula One

Lamy signed with Schübel Rennsport for the first season of the FIA GT Championshp, where he would finish 33rd in the standings with a single point in his debut race at Hockenheim. He only did the first two races in 1997 with Schübel, later returning to action at the 1997 Suzuka 1000km later in the year with the official Porsche squad, driving with Allan McNish and former F1 driver Yannick Dalmas. According to Lamy, this race was the one where he knew there were other things besides Formula One. The trio was classified in 10th place, the leading Porsche 911 in the standings, seven laps down on the Mercedes CLK GTR that won the race. He also participated in the 24 Hours of Le Mans for the first time, driving the Porsche 911 GT1 he drove in the first two rounds of the FIA GT Championship, entered by Schübel Rennsport, together with Armin Hahne and Patrice Goueslard. They were classified in 5th place at the end of the 24 Hours, and 3rd in class. In his first outing at Le Mans, Lamy went straight onto the podium in the GT1 class.

Lamy piloting the #51 Oreca Viper, which he shared with Olivier Beretta en route to the GT2 title.

For 1998, Lamy was signed by the Oreca squad to run in the GT2 category in the FIA GT Championship, driving the Chrysler Viper GTS-R. The Oreca team dominated the GT2 class, winning every race but two; together with team-mate Olivier Beretta, the duo were crowned the GT2 FIA GT Champions, the first major title for Lamy since he won the 1992 German F3 title. In his second outing at Le Mans, Lamy finished 13th overall and 2nd in class, behind the other Oreca Viper, sharing a drive with his FIA GT team-mate Beretta and American Tommy Archer.

For 1999, Lamy was picked up by the AMG Mercedes team, who had upgraded the CLK GTR car into the Mercedes CLR with the intention of winning the 1999 24 Hours of Le Mans, something Mercedes had failed with CLK GTR the years before. The events that would later unfold at the 1999 24 Hours of Le Mans are infamous.

Mercedes entered 3 cars in the event: The #4, driven by Jean Marc-Gounon, Marcel Tiemann and Mark Webber; the #5, driven by Christophe Bouchut, Peter Dumbreck and Nick Heidfeld; and the #6 Mercedes, which was shared by Franck Lagorce, Pedro Lamy and Bernd Schneider. With three strong teams, Mercedes seemed like a strong contender for overall victory. The CLR, unlike its processor the CLK GTR, was run in the LMGTP class, featuring several design chances compared to the CLK GTR, which was a GT1 car. It was lighter, it had better aerodynamics to increase top speed, tailor-made for Le Mans. Before reaching Le Mans, the car had run approximately 35,000km without any major failure. The Mercedes personnel and drivers had no idea what they would eventually face at Le Mans. In the pre-qualifying for the race, the #6 Mercedes of Lamy was the fastest of the 3 Mercedes, placing in 6th place, while the #4 and #5 were 14th and 15th respectively. One of the Mercedes suffered a setback during pre-qualifying though, as a suspension failure hit the car driven by Mark Webber. It was the first major failure suffered by the CLR.

The #6 Mercedes CLR at Le Mans, driven by Lamy, Bernd Schneider and Franck Lagorce. The car was retired following the dramatic accident of the #5. (John Brooks)

Several weeks later after pre-qualifying, it was time for the practice and qualifying sessions which would determine the grid for the 67th running of the great race. At the end of the first day, the Mercedes found themselves 4 seconds down on the leading Toyota, 5th, 6th and 8th on the grid. In the start of the day two of the qualifying session, the Mercedes #4, driven by Mark Webber at the time, was following the Audi of Frank Biela coming up to the Indianapolis corner. When Webber left the slipstream of the Audi to pass, the front end of the car suddenly lifted and went airborne, doing several backflips before landing on the ground and smashing into the barriers. The accident was not caught by television cameras, but Mercedes were aghast. The qualifying session was over for the #4 and the car left destroyed. Webber was taken to the hospital with multiple aches and pains, but was eventually cleared to race on Saturday. The #4 would eventually qualify in 10th place, the #5 in 7th and the #6 of Lamy qualified in 4th, after Bernd Schneider pulled an astonishing lap from the car to just be 2 seconds of the Toyota who was on pole. The #4 Mercedes was brought back to the pits, and Mercedes announced the car would be repaired. The drivers – especially Webber- had no idea what had just happened; the Australian attempted to relay feedback to his engineers, who were similarly struck by disbelief.

Miraculously, the #4 was repaired, and was on the warm-up come Saturday morning. The Mercedes were running in formation coming down the Hunaudieres straight, down into Mulsanne. As Webber approached Mulsanne, it happened again. The car’s nose lifted straight into the air, it did a backflip and it landed at the ground, again. This time though, TV had caught everything. Mercedes had no way to deny that the car had flipped. Webber was again totally fine, just completely shaken and angry at what had happened not once, but twice. It would be the last time Webber raced at Le Mans until 2014, when he returned with Porsche. The #4 Mercedes was a total write off, and it would fail to start the race.

On the back of this, Mercedes made some adjustments to the cars. The team made a call to then-McLaren chief designer Adrian Newey after Webber’s accident, hoping for insight into an emergency fix. They added dive planes into the fenders to try to avoid the front end going light and sustaining lift, and the drivers were instructed to not follow other cars closely. Considering the nature of La Sarthe, where a slipstream is key to making overtakes, Mercedes would be hindered from the start.

Only the #5 and the #6 Mercedes started the race. Schneider, in the #6, climbed into 3rd early on, while Bouchut was 4th after making some inroads as well. During the driver swap periods, Schneider and Bouchut reported the cars were running well, and handed the #5 and #6 to Dumbreck and Lagorce respectively. Dumbreck then had contact with one of the Porsche 911 GT2, but continued with what seemed no damage to the car. On lap 76, while catching and going for the overtake on the Toyota driven by ex-F1 driver Thierry Boutsen, the CLR of the Scottish driver suddenly lifted into the air after running over a bump at the same place Webber had suffered a flip in qualifying, flipping 3 times before landing in the wooded area right beside the circuit. This was all caught on live television. Lagorce, in the #6 Mercedes, was called into the pits to retire, but he had already made the decision to do that having watched Dumbreck flip first-hand. According to Webber, the team took 20 minutes to know if Dumbreck was alright, which he was, although he lost consciousness for a bit after the contact with the ground in the woods. The drivers, including Lamy, were all visibly shaken from what had just happened. Lamy, perhaps luckily, didn’t get to drive the car in the race, later saying that his 1999 race at Le Mans was just “disappointing in all senses of the word”, thanks to the series of events. BMW went on to win the race ahead of Toyota, but the focus was on the CLR incidents.

The cause of the crashes has never been revealed by Mercedes. Mercedes did a test in an airfield to try to investigate the causes of the crashes, but never published the results. The only thing known was that Mercedes withdrew the rest of its 1999 program, with the remaining CLRs kept under wraps, making rare appearances in the public eye.

Lamy was kept by Mercedes in 2000, and would be driving in the new DTM series for Team Rosberg, run by the 1982 F1 champion Keke Rosberg. Managing a best result of two 4th places in the two Nürburgring races, Lamy scored 39 points across the season to finish 13th in the standings. He also did the first two rounds of the 2001 season, finishing 6th twice and 17th in the standings with 12 points. It was also in 2001 when Lamy took the first of his 5 wins at the “Green Hell”, in the 24 Hours of the Nurburgring, sharing his victory with Peter Zakowski and Michael Bartels in the Zakspeed-run Dodge Viper. He would go on to win the race again in 2002 with Zakowski and Robert Lechner in the Zakspeed Viper once more, before taking victory in the BMW M3 GTR in 2004 together with Dirk Müller, Jorg Müller and Hans-Joachim Stuck, and in 2005 with Andy Priaulx, Duncan Huisman and Boris Said. He returned to winning ways with BMW again in 2010, partnering Jörg Muller, Uwe Alzen and Augusto Farfus in the M3 GT2. Together with Timo Bernhard and Marcel Tiemann, he is the driver with the most victories at the 24 Hours of the Nürburgring, being crowned “King of the Green Hell” five times.

In 2001, Lamy entered the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the Oreca-run Team Playstation, driving a Chrysler LMP in the LMP900 class. Together with former FIA GT team-mate Olivier Beretta and ex-F1 driver Karl Wendlinger they finished 5th overall, and 3rd in class. The same team returned in 2002, with Érik Comas replacing Wendlinger, once again in 5th place and 4th overall in the LMP900 class.

Lamy in the German V8Star series, racing the Zakspeed-run Jaguar.

Between 2002 and 2003, Lamy raced for Zakspeed, the team he won the 24 Hours of Nürburgring with, in the V8Star Series. Lamy took a single victory in 2002, and 3 podiums and 3 pole positions on the route to 7th the in the championship, won by Johnny Cecotto. In 2003, Lamy took 4 victories and 7 podiums on route to the title in the series, scoring 271 points to Thomas Mutsch and Michael Bartels 249 points, also taking another 3 pole positions along the way. He also took victory in the G2 class at the 24 Hours of Spa, driving the Viper with Zakspeed, together with Kurt Mollekens and Didier de Radiguès.

In 2004, Lamy drove in the Le Mans Endurance Series (today called the European Le Mans Series) with Larbre Compétition, taking 4 wins in 4 races, and the title in the GTS class. He also drove in the Belcar championship, and did a one-off in the Porsche Supercup at Monaco (his first trip to race track since 1996), where he finished 15th.

In 2005, Lamy returned to the FIA GT Championship, driving most of the season with Larbre Compétition and doing two races with the official Aston Martin team, for whom he would race Le Mans with for the next two years, retiring in 2005 and finishing 10th overall in 2006 and taking 5th in the GT1 class. He took 3 wins with Larbre and one with Aston Martin Racing, en route to 8th in the championship. He would do further outings in the FIA GT Championship; he joined Manthey Racing in 2006, finishing 2nd in the 24 Hours of Spa, 2nd again in 2007 at the same race with Vitaphone Racing Team, driving a Maserati MC12 GT1, pole position in 2008 driving a Saleen S7-R with Larbre Compétition and and 8th at Zolder with Vitaphone, named now Team Vitasystems. In 2009, he started again at Spa, but retired.

In 2005, he also ran in the American Le Mans Series, doing 3 races with Prodrive, driving an Aston Martin DBR9 and taking a podium at Laguna Seca in the final race of the season. He finished 8th on the GT1 standings.

Lamy raced Larbre’s Aston Martin DBR9 in 2006. (ACO/DPPI)

In 2006, Lamy won the 6 Hours of Vallelunga with Racing Box SRL, driving a Maserati MC12, together with Italians Marco Cioco and Piergiuseppe Perazzini. He also became the GT1 class champion in the Le Mans Series, driving for the Larbre Competition Aston Martin DBR9, taking 3 podiums across the year, including 2 victories at Instanbul and at the Nurburgring. Across the Atlantic, in the ALMS, Lamy finished 5th in the GT1 class, taking 5 podiums across the year, including 3 victories at Lime Rock, Mosport and Laguna Seca. To round up 2006, he finished 2nd in the Mil Milhas Brasil, together with the Brazilian trio of Tony Kanaan, Giuliano Losacco and Raul Boesel.

Peugeot’s return to LMP1 competition was a success; Lamy and Sarrazin won the LMP1 title overall. (ACO/DPPI)

2007 was a return to the big-time for Lamy: for the first time since 2000, he was now a manufacturer driver again – his performances in GT racing made Peugeot sign him for their new LMP1 program, using the 908 HDi FAP. The 908 HDi FAP marked the return to Le Mans for Peugeot after a 14 year absence, after winning the 1993 race with the Peugeot 905 Evo 1B. Lamy’s first race with the car was at the opening round of the Le Mans Series, the 1000km of Monza. Two 908s were entered, one for Marc Gené and Nicolas Minassian and another for Lamy and his team-mate, Stéphane Sarrazin. The two 908s qualified on the front row, a second clear of the 3rd best car, and finished 1-3, with Minassian and Gené taking victory, with Lamy and Sarrazin in 3rd, after suffering problems regarding the car’s door closing properly through the race. At the second race of the year, at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo, Lamy and Sarrazin took victory, 2 laps clear of the Charouz Lola B07/17. Lamy and Sarrazin won the next two races at Nurburgring and Spa, before retiring at Silverstone and finishing 2nd at the season finale at Interlagos. Lamy and Sarrazin’s results meant the #8 Peugeot 908 won the title in the LMP1 category, 3.5 points ahead of the #16 Pescarolo Sport Pescarolo 01 and 7 points ahead of the other Peugeot, the #7.

At the 2007 24 Hours of Le Mans, the #8 driven by Sarrazin, Lamy and Bourdais took pole position ahead of the dominating Audis. Qualifying pace didn’t materialise into actual race pace, as the #8 crossed the line 10 laps behind the #1 Audi R10, driven by Marco Werner, Frank Biela and Emanuele Pirro. It was Lamy’s first overall podium at Le Mans.

2008 was a less successful year for Peugeot; Lamy’s #8 only finished 4th overall. (ACO/DPPI)

2008 saw Peugeot enter the 12 Hours of Sebring, with Minassian, Sarrazin and Lamy sharing the #7 Peugeot. They led early on, but mechanical problems dropped the car through the field, eventually being classified 11th overall, 33 laps down on the winner, the #7 Porsche RS Spyder. Lamy and Sarrazin entered the 2008 Le Mans Series as the defending champions, but Peugeot now faced competition from the Audis. In the first race of the year, the #8 faced problems and finished in 12th place, 15 laps on the #7 Peugeot who took victory at Catalunya. Sarrazin and Lamy then won at Monza, before retiring at Spa. The #8 took again victory at the Nurburgring, before technical problems saw the car classified 19th at the season finale at Silverstone. Despite the clear pace the car had, mechanical gremlins were common and more consistent and reliable Audi R10 took the honours of the title; the #2 pairing of Prémat and Rockenfeller was crowned champion. The #8 Peugeot was classified 4th in the standings, with 21 points, 14 less than the champions and 12 less than the #7 Peugeot.

At the 2008 24 Hours of Le Mans, Lamy’s car once again took pole position, ahead of the other two Peugeots, who would lead a 1-2-3 for the first couple of hours. As the night time settled, the #8 was given a black and orange flag to come in to repairs, as its headlights were broken and needed repairs. The #7 Peugeot took the lead and seemed set to take victory until rain hit the Le Mans circuit, and the Audi’s started to reel in the #7 Peugeot at a rate of 8 seconds per lap, eventually catching and passing the #7 Peugeot. McNish, Capello and Kristensen added another victory to its name, while Lamy, Sarrazin and Wurz finished in 5th overall, 13 laps down on the Audi. The #7 Peugeot finished on the same lap as the #2 Audi, but couldn’t reel him fast enough after the track dried in the final two hours.

For 2009, the Audi R10 was replaced by the Audi R15, and since Audi needed to develop the car, Peugeot now had the upper hand in terms of car development. The car’s first race was at the 12 Hour of Sebring. Despite Peugeot having a better-developed car in the 908, Audi still came out victorious with the R15, with the usual trio of McNish, Capello and Kristensen taking honours. The #8 Peugeot, now having an all French squad (Montagny, Sarrazin and Bourdais) finished in 2nd place, 22 seconds back on the Audi. Lamy’s Peugeot crossed the line in 5th place, 27 laps down, as he partnered Klien and Minassian. Lamy raced again in the ALMS at the Petit Le Mans, finishing in 2nd place, together with Minassian, behind the other Peugeot of Montagny and Sarrazin.

At Le Mans, Lamy’s car qualified in 3rd place, as the #8 Peugeot took pole position ahead of the #1 Audi. Lamy’s race was ruined when, after a pitstop, he got released a fraction too early and got hit in the rear left wheel by the Pescarolo Peugeot 908. The tyre was punctured, and eventually the whole left portion of the car was damaged and needed to be replaced. Lamy’s team eventually finished in 6th place, 13 laps down on the winner… the #9 Peugeot driven by Brabham, Gené and Wurz! It was Peugeot’s second win at the greatest race in the world, as they beat the other Peugeot of the all French squad of Montagny, Bourdais and Sarrazin to take victory by a lap. The #1 Audi completed the podium. Lamy was left with a sour taste in his mouth although. Peugeot had the pace over Audi, and if it wasn’t for the contact with the privateer 908 entered by Pescarolo, it would have been a 3 way fight between the 3 Peugeots for overall victory.

Watch: The pitlane collision between Pedro Lamy and Jean-Christophe Boullion at the 2009 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Lamy carried on with Peugeot in LMP1 for two more years until the end of 2011, when the French manufacturer announced it was leaving endurance racing. In the 2010 edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, sharing the car with Simon Pagenaud and Sebastien Bourdais, the #3 car of the trio got pole position, as the Peugeots completed a 1-2-3 in qualifying. But despite being favourites on paper, all 3 Peugeots retired from the race, leaving Audi to snatch a clear 1-2-3 in the end. Lamy’s #3 Peugeot retired just 2 hours into the race, when the car suffered a suspension failure with Lamy at the wheel. The other two Peugeots retired both with an engine failure, with the #1 Peugeot retiring while catching the leading Audi.

Peugeot’s all-new 908 was highly successful. This is Lamy at Sebring, 2011. (ACO/DPPI)

For 2011, Peugeot introduced the next-generation 908. Despite a small horsepower loss compared to the 2010 car, the new car was more nimble and featured better fuel consumption than the 908 HDI FAP. The new 908 blitzed the 2011 Intercontinental Le Mans Cup, winning every race except one: Le Mans. The Peugeot, having won at Sebring and at Spa before, arrived at Le Mans as favourites, but in qualifying, Audi was faster completing a 1-2 followed by the #9 Peugeot and the #8 Peugeot. Considering what was seen at Sebring at Spa, and in practice, the Peugeots could run one extra lap compared to Audi over their fuel stints, which meant that over the 24 hour distance, Peugeot would have to stop less than Audi. The 2011 would be marked by two massive accidents involving Audi’s – the first, being the massive crash suffered by Allan McNish during the first hour of the race, and the other suffered by Mike Rockenfeller, eight hours into the race as night had just fallen. Both these incidents eventually decided the race, leading to a grand total of 4 hours and 46 minutes of safety car-led running throughout the 24 hour period, negating any advantage Peugeot had over Audi in fuel economy. The #2 Audi of Marcel Fässler, Andre Lotterer and Benoît Tréluyer took victory in the end, just 13 seconds ahead of the Lamy/Bourdais/Pagenaud Peugeot. It was one of the closest winning margins at Le Mans, and despite the success Peugeot had over the 2011 year, the French manufacturer deemed the economical gain of racing was minimal. They announced at the start of 2012 that they would not compete in the newly formed World Endurance Championship (WEC), even though their 2012 challenger – a hybrid version of the 908 used in 2011 – was already complete, which caused major disappointment in the Peugeot team.

With the end of the Peugeot LMP1 program, Lamy returned to GT racing, driving a Corvette C6.R for Larbre Competition. In the 4 races he did in the WEC that year, he took 3 class victories and retired in the other – his car taking victory overall in the GT-Am class. This included Lamy’s first class victory at Le Mans, sharing his car with Patrick Bornhauser and Julien Canal. Lamy tried to achieve his 6th win at the ‘Ring as well, but could only manage 9th place.

Since 2013, Pedro Lamy has been a Aston Martin driver in the World Endurance Championship, having mostly driven with Canadian gentleman driver Paul Dalla Lana and having shared his car with Mathias Lauda since 2015. He has also partnered Christoffer Nygaard in 2014 and Bill Auberlen in 2013; in 2013, Dalla Lana, Lamy and Auberlen drove in the GTE Pro class in WEC, with the trio getting 2 podiums – at Silverstone and at Shanghai – and a pole position at Interlagos. The trio retired at Le Mans, with the 2013 edition of the race being marked by the death of Allan Simonsen, Lamy’s team-mate in Aston Martin. He finished in 11th place in the WEC GTE Pro standings, with Lamy contributing effectively to the team’s performances.

The team went to GTE Am the next year, with Lamy netting podiums in every race but Le Mans – where the trio finished 5th in their class – including victories at COTA, Shanghai and Interlagos, with Lamy/Dalla Lana/Nygaard finishing 2nd in the standings, 34 points behind the duo of Christian Poulsen and David Hansson, also driving a Aston Martin. He also did races in Blancpain that year, and raced again in the 24 Hours of Nurburgring, finishing 5th overall.

Lamy driving his Aston Martin in the “Roar Before The 24” at Daytona.

In 2015, Mathias Lauda replaced Nygaard in the team, and the trio finished 3rd overall in the GTE-Am standings, scoring 144 points, 21 behind the SMP Racing team of Viktor Shaitar/Aleksey Basov/Andrea Bertolini. During the year, they scored three victories and six podiums, but it was perhaps what happened at Le Mans that mostly hurt the team’s chances of taking the world championship crown. While leading the GTE-Am class, Lamy handed the car to Dalla Lana with around 50 minutes left in the time table of the race. Coming into the final pair of chicanes of the La Sarthe track, the Canadian lost control of his Aston Martin and went into the barriers, retiring the car on the spot, and handing victory to the SMP Racing Ferrari. He once again competed in the 24 Hours of Nurburgring, finishing 14th overall.

In 2016, despite having won more races than any other team in the GTE Am class, with 5 class wins, and with another podium at Silverstone, retirements at Le Mans, Mexico City and Bahrain cost Lamy, Dalla Lana and Lauda the chance to fight for the overall title, finishing 39 points behind eventual GTE Am world champions Emmanuel Collard, François Perrodo and compatriot Rui Águas.

During the past three years, Lamy also raced multiple times in the TUDOR Sportscars championship, achieving good results. He was also presented with the “Ordem do Infante D. Henrique” by the Portuguese president, due to his services to the promotion of Portugal and its customs.

Certainly, Lamy was never one of the best Formula 1 drivers – although one can wonder how much motivation and the crash at Silverstone impacted his driving throughout his short grand prix career. However, there have not been many better drivers than Lamy in endurance racing and GT racing as a whole – his pedigree at Le Mans, Nurburgring, FIA GT Championship and in the WEC goes some way to proving that. Even at 44 years old, he’s still one of the highest-touted GT drivers in the world, and into 2017, he’s carrying on with Aston Martin once again, trying to claim that world title in GTE Am.

Over the course of motorsport’s rich and varied history, there have been many examples of drivers altering their names as they began their careers in the sport. For instance, the triple world champion Nelson Piquet was originally known as Nelson Soutomayor, as per Brazilian naming customs. The same can be applied to Ayrton Senna, who dropped his paternal surname of “Da Silva” as his career began to take off in the UK. A promising Finnish driver on the cusp of making his Formula One debut was advised by the former world champion Keke Rosberg that he should shorten his name, citing that it would cause problems with pronunciation. Jyrki Järvilehto therefore became known as J.J. Lehto for the duration of his Formula One, CART and sportscar career. But much rarer still is the racing pseudonym, of which there are only two verified instances of in Formula One history (three if “Jean Max” is included). There was “Gimax”, and the man who is the subject of this profile, “Geki”.

Giacomo Russo was born on October 19th, 1937. Very little is known of Russo’s early life, save that his family was considered to be one of the wealthiest in the Milan area. His father is believed to have owned a textiles factory. The Russo family lived near the Autodromo Nazionale Monza, then, as now, one of the oldest and fastest racing circuits in the world. A post-war reconstruction plan for Italy saw the circuit renovated and reopened for motorsport in 1948. The early Italian dominance of the fledgling Formula One series in the early 1950s, with Alfa Romeo, Ferrari and Maserati machines driven by such drivers as Giuseppe Farina, Luigi Fagioli and Alberto Ascari no doubt had an influence on many young children in Italy, and Russo was no exception. However, it is known that his family disapproved of this, seeing their son as an eventual heir to the textile company, and attempted to dissuade him of this passion.

Russo was a relative latecomer to racing by the standards of today, being 21 when he lined up in a Stanguellini single-seater on the Monza starting grid on May 3rd 1959, for his first ever motor race. Formula Junior was a brand new series mandated by the CSI, presumably as a response to the lack of Italian success in motorsport since the heydays of the early 1950s. The Stanguellini chassis, of which over a third of the field was comprised of, was based on the iconic Maserati 250F, the highly-successful Formula One chassis. Powered by a Fiat engine, it was very obviously the car of choice for the new series. The entry list though lists a “Geki (Giacomo Russo)”. Desperate to keep his family in the dark regarding his hobby, Russo entered the race under a pseudonym, a pseudonym he would use for the rest of his career.

There are two possible strands of thought regarding the choice of “Geki”, however neither of them can be verified. The first possibility regards the etymology of “Geki”, as the word itself is Japanese, translating to “strike”, which sounds plausible in a motor racing background. The second idea is that Russo chose to shorten his name, Giacomo being shortened to “Giaco”, and then Geki being produced from a further contraction. However, it would appear that the rationale of this name choice has long since been lost to the ethers of time. Interestingly enough, Geki was not the only driver in the field that day running under a pseudonym. The entry list and results for the race record a “Pegaso” and a “Madero”, both of whom were Italian. Also of note in this field was future Formula One race winner Lorenzo Bandini.

The race, held over 12 laps of the fearsome combined road course and oval circuit, was a lively affair won by Nino Crivellar. Incredibly, for his first ever motor race, Geki finished 6th, out of 9 finishers. This success motivated the young Italian to enter further Formula Junior events over the course of 1959. In his second Formula Junior outing on May 31st, at the Pergusa circuit in Sicily, Russo went one better by finishing 5th. A month later at Monza, 9th place was his reward, splitting fellow pseudonym-using drivers “Maduro” and “Elde”. The streak of top-ten finishes continued at Messina in late August, this time 8th. His final two outings in Formula Junior were much tougher affairs, a 14th at Valleunga and a 11th at Syracuse in the autumn of 1959. Ultimately, Geki finished his debut season joint 16th in the championship, with four points to his name. But much greater success was to follow on November 22nd.

With the inaugural Formula Junior season having come to a close, the 8th annual Coppa Madunina was held at Monza. Two 20 lap heats were run on the 10km combined circuit, with a further 20 lap race comprising the final. It was this day that Geki produced the best performance of his short career to date. A qualifying run was held to determine the grids for the heats, where he secured the pole for Heat 1. The heat was a much tougher prospect, Geki finishing 2 laps behind in 7th, but he had done enough to qualify for the final. Lorenzo Bandini dominated the other heat and ran away with the final, finishing some 35 seconds ahead of the next car, that of Geki himself! A 2nd place finish was the perfect way to cap off a promising debut year in motorsport.

With the beginning of the new decade, Geki resolved to continue running in Formula Junior. But first, he would compete in a special race on January 6th. The II Corsa Sul Ghiaccio A Cortina d’Amprezzo, aka the Ice Race, was a race typically held to open the Italian motorsport season. Held in the Southern Alps, it was a daunting day which promised rich rewards for those daring enough to take part. Three heats would take place, then a pair of semi finals to set the field for the final. Drawn in heat one, Geki successfully navigated the course to take 5th place. In the second of the semi finals, the young Italian secured one of the eight spots in the final by virtue of finishing 2nd. The final however, was a total disaster which produced the first DNF of Geki’s career, which was not the way he would have wanted to start the new season.

Geki’s former Stanguellini Formula Junior car. (dlg.speedfreaks.org)

A month later, Geki was off to Cuba to participate in the Cuban Grand Prix, as part of an eight-car assault on one of the event’s support races by Scuderia Madunina. This was the opening round of the Campionatio A.N.P.E.C./Auto Italiana d’Europa, a sister championship to the Italian Formula Junior, with a more international tilt. In the immediate wake of the Castro revolution, it was held on a pair of military bases on the outskirts of Havana. Geki’s category involved one race at each circuit, with the final results decided on aggregate. The first of the races was a tough affair, but he resolved to bring his Stanguellini home in 7th. Much better was to follow in the second race, where he completed a 1-2 finish for his team alongside Bandini. His 7th and 2nd brought him a 3rd place finish overall, a brilliant way to shake off the disappointment of the Ice Race. However, the remainder of the championship did not bring such reward again, failing to qualify for most of the other rounds. This being said, he was able to dig deep and finish 8th at Messina in the summer, which combined with his points from Cuba left Geki 14th in the standings, appropriately with 14 points. This may have been the only championship where Geki finished ahead of the great Jim Clark.

Much closer to home, Geki chose not to compete at the first race of the domestic season, instead bringing his trusty Stanguellini-Fiat to the second round of the season at Cesenático on April 17. It was here that he began to prove that his recent form was no fluke. A 2nd place in his heat propelled him to 3rd in the main event. He backed this up with an 8th place at Salerno. The Messina round was a combined ANPEC and Formula Junior event, meaning his 8th there also counted in the domestic championship. As a result, Geki finished joint 4th in the final standings with 14 points, sharing the position with future F1 race winner Giancarlo Baghetti and more importantly, outscoring his sparring partner Bandini.

There was a further series run to Formula Junior specifications in Italy. This was the Prova Addestrativa, or the Formula Junior Qualification series. The format of these events were simple: two races with the final results decided on aggregate. Therefore to have a chance of winning, drivers needed to be on the top of their game. Having chosen to miss the first three rounds of this championship, Geki showed up for the fourth round, held at Monza on May 15th. As one of the entrants of the superteam Scuderia Madunina, great things were expected. Geki hustled his car to 3rd in the first heat before narrowly squeaking a victory in the second heat. It was the first time the young Italian had seen the chequered flag first in his career, but due to the aggregate system, this was not enough for overall victory. Therefore he had to be content with 2nd, behind team-mate Rosari Nicolette. But make no mistake, a marker had been laid down by the young man for Milan. He would not appear again in the series until the 9th round of the season, once again held at Monza. On July 3rd, Giacomo “Geki” Russo was peerless, winning the first race by some 26 seconds, and doubled up in the second race, adding a further 17 seconds to his aggregate time. A mere 14 months into his racing career, Russo could now add an overall race win to his resume. There would be a three month gap until the final two rounds of the Prove Addestrativa, and Geki would contest both of these. He finished 3rd at Monza at the start of October, and secured a 7th at Vallelunga at the end of the month.

1960 had been a year of success and consolidation, culminating in an overall race victory. In between contesting junior series, Geki attracted much attention by finishing a fine 2nd at the support race for the Monaco Grand Prix that year, which was already one of the crown jewels of Formula One and motorsport. It was time to build upon this momentum further, and make a bid for the various Formula Junior titles in 1961. It is presumed that Geki’s family had found out about their son’s extra-curricular activities by this point in his career. Indeed, it would have been highly surprising if they hadn’t, in the wake of his success. Despite this, Geki and race promoters alike had grown accustomed to the pseudonym, and so it is most likely that a quid pro quo solution saw Russo keep his pseudonym for racing purposes. This, however, was not the only upheaval Geki faced as the racing season drew closer.

In the world of Formula One, the Italian mainstays Ferrari and Maserati had been caught napping in the late 1950s by the onslaught of the rear-engine revolution, where British manufacturers had begun to dominate the sport. The junior categories were not immune to this, and whilst the Stanguellini-Fiat combination was still a proven and reliable bet, it was based upon a design almost a decade old. The new junior chassis from Lotus were the talk of the town, and the writing was on the wall for the Italian manufacturers. They had to evolve or face extinction. However, Scuderia Madunina and Geki stuck with their trusty car, aiming to take the fight to the British chassis, whilst also battling OSCA and a number of smaller Italian manufacturers.

In addition, the Formula Junior structure appears to have been slimmed down, with just one Italian series taking place in 1961, no doubt an CSI effort to reduce the costs of motorsport. The first round of the Italian Formula Junior series took place on March 13th at Monza, and it initially appeared that the British threat had not only been overstated, but it was non-existent! Every single car entered for this race was of Italian origin, and the day turned into a thrilling battle between rivals Bandini and Geki. They left the rest of their heat for dead with only 0.2 seconds splitting the duo at the flag, in favour of Bandini. The rest of the field was over half a minute behind. The final was similar, once again Bandini edging out Geki by a tiny margin, whilst the pair outclassed the other finalists.

However, come round two at Cesenatico, a hoard of Lotus and Cooper chassis joined the championship. Given the amount of entries, three heats had to be held in lieu of the previous two heats. Geki hustled his ageing car to 2nd in his heat, but was a complete non-factor in the final, as the Lotus duo of Jo Siffert and David Piper outpaced the field. Geki ended up a lapped 5th at the flag, whilst Siffert was over a minute ahead of the fastest Italian chassis driven by Giancarlo Rigamont. In an effort to take stock of the situation, Russo chose to skip the third round of the championship, giving him and his team a week to work out what to do. In mid-April at the enormous Circuito del Garda, where racing had recently resumed after over a decade, Geki placed 3rd in his heat, but was over 90 seconds behind Siffert’s leading Lotus. A similar story resulted in the final, a distant 3rd place finish, almost three whole minutes behind the leaders. Interestingly, Colin Davis gave Siffert a much tougher time in the final, finishing only six seconds behind the Swiss driver, in an Italian Taraschi-Fiat combination. Whilst it appeared that race wins would be out of the equation, with a 2nd, a 5th and a 3rd all banked, Russo was beginning to pile up some serious points in the championship. He would be helped that, as an Italian driver, he would be able to contest every round of the championship if he so wished. The advanced British chassis with their foreign drivers would clean up if they were racing, but travel costs and other commitments meant that their entries would be few and far between.

At the Valleunga round at the end of April, an all-Italian contingent got to enjoy themselves as the Lotus and Cooper entrants stayed away. Crucially however, whilst Geki recorded another 5th in the final, he was almost a minute behind the victor. His trusty Stanguellini was helping him pile up the points, but the car was just too old to really press for the victories. It is presumed that some time between April and mid-May, in conversation with his entrant, the decision was made on the old adage “if you can’t beat them, join them”, and a Lotus 18 was purchased. At Monza on June 2nd, Geki rolled out his new toy onto the grid, bringing the only British chassis to the field that day. Despite this advantage, the day did not go to plan. Renato Pirrochi just edged out the Lotus to take the win in the heat, whilst the final saw Geki having to retire the car after 12 laps. What should have been a great debut ended in ignominy, with only the fastest lap in the final providing any comfort to the young man from Milan. A week later at Teramo produced a 5th in the heat, and 2nd in the final. Despite having a Lotus at his disposal, the Lotus 18 had been superseded by the new Lotus 20, of which Siffert drove to victory. Things looked grim from a title perspective but in actuality, Siffert was ultimately ineligible for the Formula Junior title.

More frustration followed at the end of June, where at his home track Geki failed to qualify for the final, being involved in an tangle with Bob Anderson. By now, it was clear that although the Lotus 18 was a major step up from the 250F-derived Stanguellini, the Lotus 20 was the must-have accessory on the grid. At Collemaggio on July 9th, Geki made the final but lasted only 5 laps until the Ford engine cried enough. A season that had started out so brightly was in danger of fizzling out. There was only one option that would get Russo and his team back to the front. Having purchased a brand new Lotus 20, Geki arrived at Messina on July 23rd, the penultimate round of the championship, brimming with optimism. This optimism was misplaced unfortunately, as the Milanese driver could only finish 7th in his heat, whilst in the final a pair of Kiwis, Angus Hyslop and the future Formula One champion Denny Hulme, ran away with the race, Russo finishing best of the rest in 3rd. The final race of the season took place on August 27th and in a change to the format, it became apparent that heats were removed in favour of a single 35 lap race to cap the season. Not only did Geki now have the same equipment as Siffert, but also his great rival Bandini had rocked up with his own Lotus 20. A three-way dogfight for the lead was promised, but it appears that this did not materialise. The Swiss driver dominated the race, finishing some 30 seconds ahead of Bandini, who in turn was nearly 40 seconds ahead of Geki. Once again, Russo could not get the better of Siffert.

However, Geki’s string of points finishes in the early part of the season had built a cushion that would not be decimated, as whilst the ineligible drivers such as Siffert were taking points away from Geki, ultimately they were also taking points away from Geki’s nearest rivals, Gianfranco Moroni and Franco Bernabei. The end result was Giacomo “Geki” Russo: 1961 Formula Junior champion, having not clocked a single race victory. A strangely unsatisfying way to win your first championship, but make no mistake, Russo had delivered the goods. With the reduction of Formula Junior categories that year, and the process of obtaining the troublesome Lotus 18 chassis, this was the only category Geki raced in all year. He did not enter the 1961 Monaco GP support race, where a year earlier he had turned many eyes and minds with his performance around the Principality.

The 1962 Formula Junior season began in early April at Vallelunga and for reasons unknown, Geki and Scuderia Madunina entered the old Lotus 18 chassis. One could presume this was the swansong for this chassis. As defending champion, great things were expected, and Geki duly produced a masterclass performance in an elderly chassis, finishing 2nd in his heat, and 3rd in the final. Choosing to skip the second and third rounds of the championship proved to be a mistake however, as a new rival for the Formula Junior championship made himself heard. Odoardo Govoni already had a 5th from the first round of the championship. With Geki absent from the next two rounds, Govoni finished 2nd and 3rd, establishing himself as a title contender. It is known that Geki had placed an order for the Lotus 22, the brand new chassis being produced in Norfolk, but evidently production was slipping behind because at the Circuto del Garda on May 1st, the old Lotus 18 was wheeled out once again. It must be noted that the second, third and fourth rounds of the Formula Junior championship were held within six days, and Govoni was not present for the fourth round. Trouble struck in Geki’s heat where he failed to finish. For some reason, perhaps linked to him being the reigning champion, Geki was still admitted into the final, whereupon he hustled the 18 to 5th position. A good performance maybe, but this was not the title defence he would have wanted. Even worse was to come at Monza on May 13th, where the entry lists records a DNA for Geki and Scuderia Madunina, a event where Govoni took his third podium of the season. It appears that the Lotus 22 had arrived in Italy, but possibly had been caught up in customs. This however does not explain why Geki did not simply enter the old 18 for one final race. It was now neck and neck between the upstart Govoni and the reigning champion.

Geki is wheeled to the pits at Monaco in his Lotus 22, c. 1962. (John Hendy)

A month later at Caserta, Geki finally got to race his new car in anger. But once again, victory eluded the Milanese driver, with 3rd in the heats translating to a 5th in the final. Govoni picked up yet another podium finish. It had been almost two years exactly since his first and at present only overall victory. Govoni was now leading the championship standings, ironically doing exactly what Geki had done a year previously, consistently points-scoring his way towards the title. Something needed to be done to break Govoni’s momentum, and at Monza on June 29th, Russo struck back in the best way possible. Having been pipped to 1st in his heat, Russo then engaged in a titanic duel with French driver Jean Lucienbonnet in the final, coming on top by just 8 tenths of a second. Finally, Geki had secured his second victory. Govoni kept his points-scoring streak alive with another 5th, but arguably the momentum was now with the Milanese driver. At Pergusa in mid-August, Geki led all the way, lapping everyone in the process. Monza a month later produced a 3rd, whilst Govoni could only muster a 6th. However, this marked the end of the championship for Govoni, as he did not enter another race. The championship would not leave Geki’s house for at least another season, a fact he capped off by winning the last two races of the season easily. The final standings showed how close it had been, Geki only held a six point margin over Govoni. After missing the 1961 running, Geki also took part in the Monaco Grand Prix support race, this time finishing 6th.

During the summer, Geki had struck up a friendship with the journalist Gino De Sanctis who, as can be seen from his surname, had links to the Italian manufacturer of the same name. Lotus and Cooper had long since outclassed the home manufacturers, but De Sanctis had been working on a new chassis which would utilise the dominant Ford powerplant, in lieu of the Fiat engine which had previously been used. Somewhere along the line a deal was struck, and after the Pergusa round all of Geki’s results, including the two race wins at the end of the Formula Junior season, came from behind the wheel of a De Sanctis-Ford. It would be this combination that the newly double Formula Junior champion would use to defend his crown in 1963. However, the first race of the new season did not go to plan. Around the twists of Vallelunga, Geki dominated his heat, but he could only clock five laps in the final where in a very uncharacteristic mistake, he crashed his new mount, leaving him with a repair bill and the credit of fastest lap. Slim reward for the reigning champion. Having effected repairs during the week between races, he was part of a large field which descended on the Cesenatico circuit on April 14th. With three heats having to be held to accommodate the entry list, Geki squeaked a victory in his heat but he, along with the rest of the finalists, were no match for a 21-year-old Austrian in a Cooper-Ford. Jochen Rindt easily took victory, having already announced himself with pole at Vallelunga. However, Rindt was not running a full season, and so would not pose much threat to Geki’s chances of completing a hat-trick of Formula Junior titles. Indeed, it seemed if anything would prevent this happening, it would be the champion’s new car, which was still proving troublesome.

Gearbox gremlins robbed the champion of victory at Bologna a week later. It had been a inauspicious start for a combination expected to dominate the category. However, it all came good on home soil, as Geki romped away with victory at Monza at the start of May. This seemed a false dawn though, as a week later a driveshaft failure in his heat at Circuito del Garda ensured he would not make the final, losing valuable points to his competitors. Once again the champion bounced back, taking three straight victories, at Monza in late May, Vallelunga at the beginning of June, and Caserta at the mid-point of the year. Even with this run of form, the reliability of the car was still suspect, as another driveshaft broke at Monza during the ninth round of the championship. Despite this, his four victories and a 2nd at Cesenatico had established a commanding lead in the points standings. With three rounds to go, the hat-trick was most certainly on.

Collemaggio saw another DNF for Geki, but this time it was of his own making, a crash in the final costing him valuable points. Presumably this crash had done severe damage to the car, as for the penultimate round of the championship at Pergusa, Geki entered a Lotus 27 with a Ford engine. The new car proved troublesome, with a valve problem ensuring he would not qualify from his heat. With the final race of the season, and what would prove to be the final Italian Formula Junior race ever held, Geki was back in his De Sanctis. He dominated his heat, but was pipped in the final by Corrado Manfredini. It didn’t matter however, as the young man from Milan secured the Formula Junior title once again, achieving a historic hat-trick of titles. His brace of victories in the middle of the season built an insurmountable lead. This was just as well as, in addition to his four wins and two 2nd places, Geki had also racked up six DNFs, four of which were through mechanical maladies. If the teething troubles with the car could be resolved, the combination of Giacomo Russo, De Sanctis chassis, and Ford power could be just about unbeatable in 1964. Alongside his Formula Junior season, Russo once again participated in the Monaco GP support race, yet again finishing 6th. However, on August 18th 1963, Geki received his first taste of F1 competition. A non-championship race was held around the Pergusa circuit in Sicily, and given he had raced just a week earlier in the Formula Junior round, Geki entered a Lotus 27 into the event. The race itself, which involved 16 starters, was an uneventful affair aside from a horrendous accident involving the British racer Trevor Taylor, who was lucky to escape with only minor injuries. Geki lasted 14 laps before the Ford engine expired. Interestingly enough, there is confusion regarding the entry list, with some sources suggesting that Geki entered the race under his full name.

Change was in the air as the end of 1963 eased into the beginning of 1964. The powers-that-be came to the realisation that Formula Junior was now playing two roles, firstly being a series for young drivers making their first steps into single-seater competition, but the series was now also the only international single-seater series below F1. With costs spiralling and young drivers struggling to compete against established competition, the decision was made to abolish Formula Junior, and reintroduce the Formula 2 and Formula 3 categories, with the former being positioned as the stepping stone to Formula 1, and the latter as the junior series. Geki chose to compete in both, and with Italian F3 more or less being a continuation of Formula Junior, the possibility of winning a fourth consecutive championship presented itself to the Milanese driver. He joined Scuderia Sorocaima and would once again drive a De Sanctis-Ford. Rumour has it that Ferrari were preparing to offer Russo a contract to race for the works team in F2. However, this proved to be just that, a rumour.

The first race of the new Italian F3 series was held at Monza in early April. Geki immediately sent out a message to his competitors by winning his heat and the final. A month later, once again at Monza, Geki replicated his April performance. Two wins from two rounds was a defining statement of intent. Due to the strange calendar, a third round was held at Monza just four days later, though the organisers needn’t have bothered, given Geki rattled off a third straight win in the final. Eventually an undisclosed DNF ended Geki’s winning streak at Caserta in late-June, though not before easily winning his heat. Normal service seemingly resumed at Monza a week later. However, Geki would have to fight hard to win this round, as he was beaten by the Brabham of Silvio Moser in the heats. Moser would only last 8 laps in the final before crashing, leaving the path clear for Geki tor record his fourth win of the season.

A long summer break followed, longer than first anticipated as the Pergusa round scheduled for August was cancelled. The F3 field reconvened at Vallelunga in mid-September, where once again the reigning champion was untouchable. A week later at Monza, Geki secured his sixth win of the season, with only Ernesto Brambilla putting up a challenge on track. It was obvious now that Geki was going to win the inaugural F3 championship. Unfortunately, the season ended on a sour note at Monza on October 18th, where battling for a record-breaking seventh victory, his gearbox seized with a few laps to go. A glance at the final standings underlines just how dominant Russo was in 1964, as his 72 points were more than twice as many as that of Mario Casoni, who finished 2nd in the standings.

Geki also chose to compete in the International Formula 2 series with his new team, this time driving a Milan-built Wainer 63 chassis with a Ford engine. The first race of the new series was held in Buenos Aires, and whilst Geki proved competitive in his heat, the final was a much tougher prospect, one that the car could not handle. A retirement on lap 20 ended his hopes for points. At Rosario a week later, Geki achieved a podium finish. The Argentinian tour continued to Cordóba, where once again the Wainer let its driver down with a mechanical DNF. Returning to Buenos Aires for the final Argentinian round, Geki survived a tough heat to finish 4th in the final. However, the records of this race are inconclusive, as it is suggested that Geki used a Lotus 27 instead of his Wainer. The series moved to Germany for a race on the Nürburgring Südschleife. Here, Russo drove a Fiat Abarth 232 in lieu of the Wainer. Unfortunately, in a field containing reigning Formula One champion Jim Clark and a number of other F1 stars, Geki proved uncompetitive, only managing a lapped 9th. At the fearsome AVUS a month later, Geki could only secure a 11th on aggregate, after failing to finish his second heat. Geki would contest two more F2 events with little success. At Reims in July a valve failure put him on the sidelines, whilst at Vallelunga a recurring oil pressure problem ruined his day. All in all it had been a trying season, which also highlighted the problems of Formula Junior, as the once dominant champion was nothing more than an also-ran for much of his time in F2.

During 1964, Geki came into contact with Rob Walker, founder of the legendary Formula One privateers Rob Walker Racing. Whilst the glory days of Stirling Moss and Maurice Trintignant battling the factory teams for victory in the late 1950s and early 1960s had long since passed, the team remained a well-respected entrant, running a selection of Brabham, Cooper and Lotus cars. Having purchased a pair of Brabham BT11 chassis mid-season, one of which was run by the team’s full-time driver Joakim “Jo” Bonnier, the second chassis was available for hire. Jochen Rindt had hired the car for a one-off entry at the first world championship Austrian Grand Prix, beginning his short but ultimately successful F1 career. Having seen one of his rivals break through to F1 (Rindt’s performance at Zeltweg got him noticed by the works Cooper team, who duly signed him for a full season in 1965), Geki was eager to do the same. With his impressive racing CV coupled with his wealthy background, it was no surprise that a deal was made for Geki to drive the second BT11 at the Italian Grand Prix, on home soil at Monza. This was his chance to impress the F1 paddock. With the experienced Bonnier as his team mate, and a solid car underneath him, the omens looked good as the weekend approached.

After the tragic events of the 1961 grand prix, the organisers decreed a maximum of 20 cars would be allowed to start the Italian GP from there on in. 25 cars were entered, which would mean five unlucky drivers would fail to start the race. Already experienced with the BT11, Bonnier safely put himself into the field with a time good enough for 12th. Unfortunately, Geki was unable to get up to speed, and could only produce a lap of 1:44, 23rd fastest, more than a second slower than Jean-Claude Rudaz, who was the slowest qualifier. Rudaz would not even make the race, as his engine blew shortly after making the grid. This meant that the 21st fastest car would be promoted into the race, that of Maurice Tringtinant. As a result, Geki was eight tenths of a second away from his first Formula One start. Unlike Rindt a race before, he would not get the chance to showcase his talents on the main stage.

Geki racing his De Sanctis-Ford at Monza, during the 1965 Italian Formula Three season.

Geki entered 1965 with mixed feelings. He was now a quadruple junior champion, but he had badly fluffed his Formula One audition. Geki decided to put the disappointment behind him, and looked towards securing a fifth consecutive junior title. The 1965 F3 season could not have started better for the reigning champion, with two straight victories at Monza and at the Imola facility in Bologna. With almost two months to wait until the next round of the championship, Geki decided to mothball the De Sanctis, and arranged the purchase of a BWA chassis. The new combination however was untried, and it showed at the two rounds at Monza at the end of May. Geki struggled through the heats, and failed to finish either final. Effectively, swapping the De Sanctis for the new car turned out to be a self-inflicted blow. The De Sanctis was wheeled out for the next couple of rounds, but it had seemingly turned back into the unreliable machine it was a couple of seasons earlier, and more DNFs resulted. Eventually, Geki dumped the BWA and the De Sanctis, and contested the final round of the season in a Wainer chassis, and was the class of the field around Vallelunga, dominating his heat and the final. His three victories were his only points scores of the year, and they propelled him to 3rd in the championship. Andrea de Adamich had outscored the champion by one single point, and Ernesto Brambilla pipped Geki by 0.2 points! But the margin did not matter. The quadruple junior champion had finally been vanquished, and it was largely of his own making.

Like the previous year, Geki contested a number of F2 races. He provisionally entered a BWA-Lancia combination at the Nürburgring Südschleife at the tail end of April, but he and the car never appeared in the paddock. His other three F2 entries ended up being a waste of time and money. The F2 round at Vallelunga in mid-May saw Geki enter a Brabham BT16, but the car retired with mechanical trouble in the first heat, which was not repairable in time for the second heat. Later in the year, he entered the Grand Prix of Albi with a BWA-Cosworth, completing 41 laps until the brakes failed. Finally, he entered an F2 race at the end of October in Sicily, using his Wainer-Ford. The race promised much, given Geki had managed a front row qualifying start. However, his race lasted barely a few corners before he and the polesitter Clay Regazzoni tangled, putting both out.

1965 was also the year Geki made his first appearance at Le Mans. His success in Formula Junior and Italian Formula Three had attracted the attention of Autodelta, Alfa Romeo’s competition department. They asked Geki if he would like to partner Carlo Zuccoil in an Alfa Romeo Giulia for the endurance race. The legend of Le Mans was already an enormous draw, and Geki did not need to be asked twice for his answer. Competing in the GT1600 class, Geki was installed in the car for the first stint. It would unfortunately be a brief outing, as the car suffered a problem with an oil pipe after just two hours of competition, a problem that was found to be terminal. The car managed 22 laps, and that was that.

Despite the disaster the previous year, the F1 door was not firmly closed, and with the Italian Grand Prix once again on the horizon, Geki resolved to find a car and try once again to make the race. As it turned out, the works Lotus team had brought along a third car for the race, a 25 chassis usually used as a backup for the 33s used by Jim Clark and Mike Spence. Determined to show the F1 paddock what he was capable of, Geki secured a deal to race the 25 at Monza. In better news, the organisers had decided that the 20-car limit was no longer necessary, and that all entrants would qualify. 23 cars showed up to qualify on the Saturday, and when the session was over, Geki had recorded a lap time of 1:41.7, good enough for 20th place on the grid. Giacomo “Geki” Russo was about to start his first championship Formula One race. Once the green flag dropped on Sunday, Geki chose to take it easy for the first couple of laps, neglecting to get involved in the slipstreaming with the rest of the field until he was comfortable with the car. From then on in, he steadily moved up through the field, his local experience at Monza serving him well. On lap 20, he even managed to crack the top 10 by poking his nose in front of Richie Ginther’s works Honda for a lap, before slipping down to 12th and 13th, places he would yo-yo between for the rest of his race. Having made it to lap 36, running 13th of the eighteen remaining cars, his transmission seized. The home boy’s day was done.

The Alfa Romeo Giulia (#63) of Geki and Gaston Andrey heads the sister car of Lucien Bianchi and Bernard Constan during the 1966 12 Hours of Sebring.

The early part of 1966. would see Geki clinch his biggest victory yet, however it came in a race where ultimately, the winners did not matter in the grand scheme of things. Autodelta decided to enter a brace of Giulias into the 12 Hours of Sebring, the premier American endurance race. Geki was pared with the Swiss driver Gaston Andrey. In a race marred by the tragedies of Bob McLean, who perished in a inferno when his Ford GT lost control and crashed into a telegraph pole, and the deaths of four spectators when the Porsche of Don Wester spun at high speed into the area where they were standing, Geki and Andrey nursed their car to finish 14th overall, and first in class. There would be no celebrations afterwards when the full details of the tragedies were revealed to the drivers. This was not the only major sportscar event Geki and Autodelta would enter that year however. The Targa Florio, held around the mountainous areas of Sicily, was one of two open-road Italian sportscar races held since the early days of motorsport, and after the demise of the Mille Miglia after the tragic events of the 1957 running, it was now the sole open-road race in Italy. Consequently, the Italian works teams would use it as a race to showcase their prowess, and Autodelta were no exception. Geki drove a Giulia alongside Teodore Zeccoli in the event, held on May 8th of the year, to 13th place overall having managing nine laps of the circuit.

His sportscar commitments aside, Geki resolved to run a partial schedule in Italian F3 this season. Having decided to rejoin Scuderia Madunina, running a Wainer-Ford, the first race of the season, held at Imola, was an abject disaster, with the former champion only managing nine laps in his heat until he uncharacteristically spun off. A few weeks later at Monza, a 3rd place in the heats ultimately counted for nothing when the Ford engine in his car detonated on the second lap of the final. A week later, another mechanical failure sidelined Geki in the final. At the Monaco GP support race, which had been turned into a fully-fledged F3 round, Geki could only manage a lapped 13th in his heat, which ended up not being enough to qualify for a race which he had starred in during previous editions. Yet more strife followed at Vallelunga a week later, where after dominating his heat, an oil leak put paid to his chances in the final. On June 9th, Geki was finally able to record a finish, with a 6th in the final at Vallelunga. Even this was a disappointment given he had easily won his heat. Caserta a few weeks later produced the ignominy of finishing stone dead last in the final, whilst a week later an enormous field descended on Monza, where Geki could only muster a lapped 16th. He could not get past the first lap at Mugello in mid-July. Pergusa and Imola were slightly kinder to the former champion, producing an 8th and a 5th, but it had been a dismal year in a category which he had dominated previously.

Geki racing the Lotus 33 with a bored-out Climax engine during the Italian Grand Prix, 1966.

Having done well enough in his first F1 start a year earlier, Geki was invited back by Lotus to race at Monza once again. This time, he would be able to use the Lotus 33, which was only one season removed from taking Jim Clark to his second world championship. However, with the sea change in engine regulations ushering in the three-litre era of Formula One, he would have to make do with a Climax engine that had been bored out to two litres, putting him at a disadvantage from the get go. The organisers had also had a rethink, and reinstated the 20-car limit for the grand prix. 22 cars descended on Monza to qualify for the race. Geki resolved himself and set a lap time of 1:39.3, which was seven tenths faster than former world champion Phil Hill in the troublesome Eagle chassis built by fellow racer Dan Gurney, and over a second ahead of the BRM of the young New Zealander Chris Amon. The Milanese driver had done enough to scrape onto the final row of the grid, but with the only car setting similar speeds to him being Gurney in the second of the homebuilt Eagles, it looked like Sunday would be a long day of graft.

The race started well, with Geki being able to pick off Gurney and Jo Bonnier on the first lap. One of the frontrunners was Geki’s old rival Bandini, and a fuel pipe problem consigned him to run behind Geki until the car finally broke down on lap 32. With Gurney retiring a few laps into the race, Geki settled down to his lonely run. Up at the front, reigning world champion Jim Clark was struggling once again with the heavy and unreliable Lotus-BRM combination that the works team was running for the 1966 season, and slid down the field to 13th. This meant that Geki was able to catch and slipstream Clark, and on lap 21 he sealed the deal. Clark put up no resistance and continued to drift backwards, trying in vain to nurse his car to the finish. With further retirements from cars in front of him, Geki found himself running in 9th by the time Ludovico Scarffiotti took the chequered flag for his first and only victory in Formula One. Five laps behind and last of the classified runners he may have been, but Geki had achieved his first finish in Formula One. Had Peter Arundell’s engine failed a lap earlier than it did, 8th place was for the taking. No matter though, Geki had done well in an outdated and underpowered car.

With the advent of 1967, Autodelta were developing a new prototype, the Alfa Romeo Tipo 33. Eager to showcase its new challenger, a T33 was entered in the 1967 Targa Florio. Geki was chosen to drive alongside Nino Todaro. Unfortunately, the duo ended up in a race-ending tangle with the Austin-Healey Sprite of Rauno Aaltonen and Clive Baker on the seventh lap. Once again, Geki decided to run the Italian F3 championship, and immediately put the frustrations of 1966 behind him with a masterful performance at Monza in early April, finishing 2nd in his heat and winning the final in a De Sanctis-Ford. A 2nd place followed at Vallelunga, after which Geki took the bold decision to replace his De Sanctis with a Matra MS5. Unlike the terrible BWA, the Matra was immediately competitive out of the blocks, securing Geki a 2nd at Imola, and a 3rd and 4th at the next two rounds at Monza.

The following round of the championship was to be held at Caserta, one of Geki’s favourite hunting grounds in the junior series. Scheduled for June 18th, it looked like a good result was on the cards, as Geki hustled his Matra to 2nd in his heat. In the final, Geki slipped backwards through the field. Suddenly, on lap 9 of the race, the cars of Beat Fehr and Andrea Saltari collided, coming to rest broadside to the oncoming drivers. Franco Foresti skidded on oil and crashed shortly afterwards. The three stricken cars were on a blind section of the track, considered to be the fastest point of the lap. Seeing no marshals anywhere near the accident scene, Fehr made the fateful decision to run up the track towards the oncoming cars, attempting to warn them of the accident ahead. A group of cars, including Geki, were now heading towards the carnage.

The aftermath of Geki’s fatal accident at Caserta in 1967.

The series of events which occurred a few seconds later are still disputed to this day. Some sources suggest Geki lost control of his Matra attempting to avoid Fehr. The car left the road and piled into the wall of a electrical substation at unabated speed, bursting into flames as it came to rest. Geki was thrown from the car, perishing instantly. He was four months shy of his 30th birthday. It is also known that Fehr was hit and killed by a car at the scene, with several sources suggesting Fehr was hit by Geki’s Matra. However, the multitude of conflicting reports of the tragedy, and the absolute lack of marshals/course workers at the scene, likely mean that the full truth will never be known. In a further tragic twist, the car of Romano Perdomi, who raced under the pseudonym of “Tiger”, also crashed heavily at the scene. He was gravely injured, and had to be cut free from the wreckage of his car by his own pit crew, as the local fire brigade was woefully unprepared for such a disaster. He sadly succumbed to his injuries a few days later. With the series of accidents wiping out almost the entire field, the race was stopped,, and ultimately cancelled. The race director was initially unaware of the carnage, and only learnt of it when Massimo Natili, one of the four remaining competitors still running, informed him after the red flag was shown. When word of the tragedy and the absolute lack of marshalling reached the media, the outcry was such that this would prove to be the final race held on the streets of Caserta.

The devastated Italian F3 championship was cancelled, with Geki announced as the posthumous champion. A round of the 1968 Italian Formula Three championship, held at Monza on June 2nd, was renamed the “Grand Premio Geki”, in honour of the local hero, the five-time junior champion, the master of Monza, who was cut down in his prime. Giacomo “Geki” Russo is survived by his wife, and his two daughters.

The Red Bull Junior Team is dedicated to the unearthing and recruiting of young motorsport talent and gearing them for a drive in Red Bull’s multiple championship-winning Formula One team. To reach this level though, these drivers (upon delivering satisfactory results in junior formulae, of course) must impress in Red Bull’s satellite Toro Rosso team. This is where Sebastian Vettel, Daniel Ricciardo, Daniil Kvyat and Max Verstappen all came through to reach the ‘main’ Red Bull team, and where other drivers have fallen by the wayside, cast out of the sport they worked so hard to reach: Scott Speed, Sébastien Bourdais, Jaime Alguersuari, Jean-Éric Vergne and, of course, Sébastien Buemi, former WEC and defending Formula E champion heading into the young category’s third season.

Before Formula One

Buemi, very likely on his way to winning another kart race.

Sébastien Olivier Buemi was born in the tranquil Swiss town of Aigle in the canton of Vaud in 1988. Racing proved to be something of a family pastime; his grandfather Georges Gachnang was a keen sports car racer in the 1960s and his cousin Natacha Gachnang is a racing driver with experience in Formula BMW, F3 and the short-lived F2 series that ran from 2009-12. Sébastien’s own journey began in Christmas 1993 when his father bought him his first kart, much to the displeasure of Georges. Being a member of a generation before safety was a byword in the sport’s evolution, Georges lost many acquaintances during his career, including his close friend Jo Bonnier at Le Mans in 1972. Despite this early hesitation though, Georges became one of Sébastien’s biggest supporters, and was a regular sight wherever he was racing.

Buemi’s first year of competitive kart racing brought instant success, winning the Swiss Minis Championship at the age of nine, the first of four national titles won by him between 1998 and 2002. He also won the European Championship in 2002 and the Italian title in 2003. In 2004, now aged fifteen, Buemi made the step up to single seaters, his first destination: German Formula BMW, where his cousin Natacha was entering her second season.

2004-05

Driving for Lars Kaufmann Racing, Buemi performed admirably, taking pole positions at the Lausitzring and Norisring and finishing on the podium on eight occasions. He was never first across the line, a difficult feat in itself, as the similarly named Sebastian Vettel was hogging all the glory by winning all but two of the twenty races, a streak of dominance that even his 2011 and 2013 F1 title campaigns cannot match. But Vettel already had a season in the category under his belt, while Buemi was only a rookie, the highest placed in the championship with a fine third place after a season-long battle for this honour with Dutch New Zealander Chris van der Drift. However, it was the latter who would take home the separate rookie championship by just one point after an exciting duel in the final round at Hockenheim. Nevertheless, Buemi had caught the good eye of Dr. Helmut Marko and he signed a five-year contract with Red Bull, whose livery would be appearing on his car from 2005.

Buemi had also been given his first taste of Formula One machinery in 2004; in July, sponsor TAG Heuer had organised a test run for him in an old Arrows A20 at the Circuit du Luc, one-time home of the AGS F1 team, who now ran the ‘TAG Heuer Formula 1 Driving School with AGS’. The experience only served to fuel the Swiss teenager’s hunger for F1 glory, who commented: “the sensations are extraordinary. More than ever after this experience, I am determined to conquer the Formula BMW Championship in order to gradually climb the rungs that I hope will one day lead to Formula 1.”

2005 marked the beginning of an ongoing relationship between Buemi and Red Bull.

Season two of Formula BMW ADAC would prove to be a touch more interesting to the onlooker, as a fierce battle for the title unfolded between our intrepid Swiss hero and another familiar name from our contemporary Formula One: rookie driver Nico Hülkenberg. Buemi was now driving for Mücke Motorsport, who gave Vettel the drive that took him to title dominance. The head-to-head stats would be close between Nico and Sébastien: nine poles for Nico vs. seven for Seb, eight wins vs. seven, and six other podiums vs. nine. The title race predictably went down to the wire at Hockenheim in October and, like all good title showdowns, it had its share of controversy. After a late braking move made by the Swiss at the end of a safety car period in the Saturday race he was given a 30-second time penalty; Hülkenberg got the same penalty for overtaking Buemi. An appeal was launched, and the stewards decided there was no unsportsmanlike conduct in Buemi’s driving and revoked his penalty, which gave him the win and the series title with an unassailable points lead of 290 to Hülkenberg’s 265. Hülkenberg won the Sunday race, undeterred by this setback, with Buemi coming home third. The saga did not end here though, as another appeal was launched regarding Buemi’s driving in the first race and this time the results were more serious, with Seb now being given a 60-second penalty, which demoted him to sixteenth place and gave Hülkenberg the title instead.

But Buemi would have one final chance to one-up Hülkenberg before the year was out, and that was at the first Formula BMW World Final, held on the Bahrain International Circuit on the 16th December. It was an event with a massive 35-driver entry list consisting of the frontrunners from the German, British, American and Asian Formula BMW series. Now it was Hülkenberg’s turn to feel the wrath of the stewards, and once again it involved a safety car: The German was first on the road, but he was given a ten-second penalty after failing to maintain his slow pace in the time between the withdrawal of the safety car and the waving of the green flag; he was thus demoted to third. Buemi took second, while Marco Holzer was awarded the win and the BMW Sauber F1 test drive that came with it.

2006

Di Resta leads Buemi and the rest of the field away in the Masters of F3 at Zandvoort. (Hugo Garritsen)

Buemi was still not a champion in single seaters, but this mattered little to his career progression, as he moved up to the F3 Euro Series with Mücke for the 2006 season. He had some experience with chassis supplier Dallara’s F305 from a one-off appearance in a Spanish F3 round in 2005, so it was not entirely a step into the unknown. His teammate, Jonathan Summerton, was a fellow rookie fresh out of Formula BMW who had scored a single podium at Spa; this all suggested 2006 might be a strong début season for Buemi. However, results here were more mixed than they were in Formula BMW, with the Swiss, whether through his fault or others’, getting involved in a number of incidents, including a tangle with Kamui Kobayashi in the first Lausitzring race that ended with his Dallara in a precarious upside-down position, two more during the Norisring weekend (one with Charlie Kimball in qualifying and the other with fellow Red Bull junior Sebastian Vettel in race two) and a first corner collision with Romain Grosjean in the first Le Mans race.

Watch: Buemi and Kobayashi tangle at the Lausitzring.

Buemi heads the field on the way to his first F3 win at Oschersleben. (LAT)

The season did have its bright spots though; at the non-championship Masters of Formula 3 event at Zandvoort, Buemi was part of an exciting battle for pole position – ultimately ending up third – before making an excellent start in the race, overtaking pole sitter Giedo van der Garde and slotting into second behind Paul di Resta. Giedo was not one to give up though, and Buemi had to fend off the local hero for lap after lap. This order remained until lap nine, when the Dutchman finally got past at Tarzan and promptly chased down di Resta, though this time a pass would not be made. Buemi ended the race where he started – in third – but was only four seconds off the leading pair. He would walk away from his first Euro Series season having attained more fastest race laps than anyone else and a win in the second Oschersleben race, achieved after having a much better getaway from second on the grid than pole sitter Guillaume Moreau, and after Vettel had spun off attempting to pressure Buemi for the lead. He ended the year twelfth in the standings, one point behind teammate Summerton, who won the final race at Hockenheim from reverse grid pole. Despite a rather middling introduction to Formula Three, Buemi was picked up by Trevor Carlin to join Vettel, Oliver Jarvis and Maro Engel in their assault on that most prestigious of F3 motor races, the Macau Grand Prix.

Buemi in action at the Macau Grand Prix, where incidents for other drivers allowed to finish a fine fourth. (Formula 3 Euro Series)

The Guia Circuit in Macau is one that, as the saying goes, needs no introduction; this would surely be the biggest single event of young Sébastien Buemi’s career thus far. Both qualifying sessions for Macau were held in the rain, and the state of chaos that it naturally heralded resulted in quite a few broken bits of cars and frustrated drivers. Among the overzealous or unlucky were Adrian Sutil, Charlie Kimball, newly crowned F3 Euro Series champion Paul di Resta, Mike Conway and even pole sitter Kamui Kobayashi, either ending up in the barriers lining the circuit, or running over debris left by those who ended up in the barriers lining the circuit. Buemi seemed unable to take proper advantage of this and ended up eighteenth on the grid for the qualifying race. This time he would be able to benefit from retirements and other misfortunes further up the order – including a crash by teammate Vettel on the penultimate lap – to end up twelfth on the grid for the main event, where once again chaos was the word of the day. On the opening lap, di Resta slid into front-row starters Kobayashi and Marko Asmer at Lisboa, allowing Conway (who had started seventh) to take the lead. Another collision between di Resta and Rodolfo Avila brought out the safety car. Later, on lap nine, Kobayashi collided with Romain Grosjean, and Kohei Hirate, another frontrunner, ended up in the wall on the penultimate lap. With all this, Buemi was able to claim fourth place, seven seconds off race winner Conway.

Buemi’s 2006 season also consisted of a part-time Formula Renault schedule wherever his F3 commitments allowed, which he used as an opportunity to learn circuits that he would also be racing on in F3 that year, such as the Nürburgring and Zandvoort. He took three wins: two in Northern European Cup races at the Nürburgring and Salzburgring, and one in the Eurocup at Donington Park. His racing activities would not be suspended for the winter of 2006-07, for he had earned a spot on the Swiss A1 Grand Prix team, sharing his seat with fellow Red Bull protégé Neel Jani; Buemi would have the honour of leading the team in the opening two rounds of the 2006-07 season at Zandvoort and Brno.

He qualified well at Zandvoort, setting the fifth fastest time, but scrutineering found that the car had run with only one anti-roll bar canister instead of the required two. He was judged to have gained no performance advantage, but, in the interest of upholding the importance of conforming to the technical regulations, he was demoted to eleventh on the grid, which became tenth in the sprint race, just half a second off home driver Jeroen Bleekemolen. He would start ninth for the feature race and finish eighth after having to serve a drive-through penalty for pitting before the designated pit stop window. Not an ideal weekend, but a nevertheless respectable A1GP début.

Brno was a broadly similar story results-wise; Buemi ended the second free practice session in second place behind his old Formula BMW rival Nico Hülkenberg (who was representing Germany in the series), before finishing eighth and tenth in the respective races, briefly leading the feature race before having to pit, and once again finishing right on Bleekemolen’s tail, who himself was trying unsuccessfully to pass China’s Congfu Cheng.

2007

Jani took over for the Beijing round, which was being held only several days before Buemi’s Macau début, and would also be driving the car at the following two rounds in Sepang and Sentul – winning the sprint race from pole in Sepang – before Buemi would return to the wheel for the first round of the New Year at Taupo in New Zealand. He had shown improvement since he had last raced three months earlier in Brno, qualifying and finishing fifth in the sprint race and fourth in the feature, less than a second off a podium spot behind local boy Jonny Reid, and 1.3 seconds off second place finisher Loïc Duval.

Buemi leads Holland’s Jeroen Bleekemolen at Eastern Creek.

Jani was scheduled to take over once again for the next round at Eastern Creek, before a rather painful incident involving a car door slamming on his hand following a Champ Car test at Sebring left him unable to compete. Buemi, who had just flown home to Europe, was asked to return: “I hardly had time to unpack when I received a phone call from our team principal asking if I could return to Eastern Creek. It feels good to know I’m driving again, but it is a big responsibility because I have never seen the track before.” Experience or lack thereof did not seem as great a handicap as he might have anticipated, as he finished an excellent fourth in the sprint race, but he did not make many friends in the feature race, least of all the Irish team, as an optimistic move on Richard Lyons resulted in a damaged suspension for the Ulsterman, ruining his chances of securing the seventh place in which he had been running. Lyons himself had some harsh words on the incident:

“It’s a bit difficult to get a result when someone drives into the back of your car and pushes you off the track. I am not sure what tactic that is, but maybe the guy has to take his brain out to get his helmet to fit. We’d had a good race up until then, again the pit stop was great and we were making up places. Malaysia (Alex Yoong) in front of me was struggling so I could have taken him, but Switzerland put an end to that.”

Ireland team principal Mark Gallagher was no more impressed, but Mark, also head of commercial affairs at Red Bull Racing, did not feel so compelled to ask whether the Swiss driver’s head was too big for his helmet:

“Gary (Anderson), Richard, John O’Hara and the whole team have worked really hard to move things forward over the last two race weekends and today a top 6 finish was on the cards. The race incident isn’t worth agonising over – I doubt Buemi will build a career on that.”

Jani was back from his injury three weeks later for the South African round at Durban, with Marcel Fässler taking over for Mexico City. Buemi was kept busy during this period, filling in for Sebastian Vettel at Carlin in a World Series by Renault test at the Circuit de Catalunya, the German unavailable due to his F1 commitments with the BMW Sauber team in Melbourne. He put in the seventh best time on the second (and his only) day of running. He was also gearing up for his second season in the F3 Euro Series and put in some very quick times in testing, but come April, it was A1GP time again, Buemi receiving the honour of leading Switzerland in the final two rounds of the season at Shanghai and Brands Hatch. His thoughts:

“It’s very exciting to be back behind the wheel, the last time was in Australia where I scored seven points for the team. Since then, I have kept very busy testing for F3 and preparing ahead of the season, setting the fastest times in most of the recent tests. Of course, I have no experience yet of driving on the Shanghai track, but I had a good look at the track and at last year’s data. I will arrive early to get over the jet-lag and be able to see the track, so I hope it will go well. I hope to keep the good level and good results of the team at the penultimate race for the race in China.”

Switzerland team principal Max Welti also expressed his optimism for the upcoming Shanghai race:

“I am confident that with our experience on this track from last year, a well-prepared car, and Sébastien Buemi back on racing duties with Marcel Fässler our rookie again, we will do a good job on the impressive Chinese track. The championship is very close with our team sixth in the classification with 45 points, five points behind Malaysia and two points ahead of Netherlands and we are more determined than ever to take a step up in the classification this weekend. We are determined to continue moving up the standings with a great result this weekend.”

Buemi finished fourth in the sprint race after a fine overtaking move on his 2006 F3 teammate Jonathan Summerton in the penultimate corner. He followed this up with a ninth in the feature race, within touching distance of France’s Jean-Karl Vernay. Once again, he did rather well when taking his lack of experience into consideration.

The following week, Buemi was back in Europe for the beginning of the 2007 edition of the F3 Euro Series. He was reunited with Peter Mücke’s outfit, and had a new teammate in series rookie Edoardo Piscopo. This time, Buemi showed what difference a year could make by leading from lights to flag in the opening race at Hockenheim, followed by a third in the reverse grid race at the same venue, these results giving him the championship lead. Thus, Sébastien went into his next race, the A1GP season finale at Brands Hatch a week later, in good spirits:

“I have just taken two podiums this weekend in the F3 championship in Germany. I am top of my form and already know part of the Brands Hatch circuit as I’ve raced on a shorter version before. I only have another four corners to learn in real terms. The race this weekend will be good training for me next time I’m here in three months. After Shanghai, my objective is a podium to end the season and climb back up the championship standings.”

Buemi ends the first half of his final A1GP weekend in the gravel after tangling with Adrian Zaugg.(motorsport.com)

Despite Buemi’s confidence going into the weekend, it would turn out to be one to forget; an attempt to overtake South Africa’s Adrian Zaugg into Paddock Hill in the sprint race ended with both stranded in the gravel. With the grid for the feature race determined by a system of points accumulated in the sprint, Buemi would be starting a disappointing 20th in what would be his final competitive drive in A1GP. He certainly made the most of it, fighting his way up to twelfth by the chequered flag, only to be disqualified along with Ireland’s Richard Lyons for missing the designated pitstop window.

It would be over a month before Buemi’s next F3 race, but he would find himself back in action sooner than anticipated; Red Bull Junior Michael Ammermüller had injured his wrist in the GP2 curtain-raiser in Bahrain and had been replaced in his ART Grand Prix team by Mikhail Aleshin for the second round of the season at Catalunya. Ammermüller was expected to return for round three in Monaco, but a last-minute check-up revealed that his wrist had not healed enough, and so Seb Buemi was hastily nominated as his replacement. This being an opportunity to race at one of motor racing’s most prestigious venues the Swiss was elated: “Of course I’m sorry for Michael, but I’m still looking forward to the assignment. After all it’s something special to get to race in Monaco.”

Buemi in his second F3 Euroseries season. This time, Buemi was a serious contender for the title.

Like in A1GP, Buemi was quick to adapt to unfamiliar conditions; despite the car and circuit both being very new to him, he acquitted himself well and was lapping on a pace that compared favourably with that of his teammate Lucas di Grassi in practice, the two sitting at the top of the timesheets in the Friday session, with the Brazilian leading the Swiss by less than a tenth of a second. The order was reversed in qualifying, Buemi outpacing di Grassi by just four hundredths to take fourth on the grid behind Andi Zuber, Giorgio Pantano and pole sitter Pastor Maldonado, who dominated much of the session. At this time the GP2 format for Monaco was atypical for the series, consisting only of a single feature race, as opposed to the double header format used in other rounds and in more recent visits by GP2 to the principality. As such, there would be no reverse grid pole for anyone to worry about, and only one winner’s trophy to take home. Buemi did not achieve a great getaway at the start; he initially passed Zuber for third, the Austrian-born Emirati having stalled his car, but di Grassi immediately came through to take the position from Buemi in the run to Sainte Devote. He would end the opening lap in sixth place, having also been passed by Vitaly Petrov and Luca Filippi. Like Buemi’s Macau experience, the combination of inexperienced youngsters and a street circuit had somewhat disastrous results for some. In brief, among those running into either each other or the barriers were Karun Chandhok, Andy Soucek, defending Macau GP winner Mike Conway, Sakon Yamamoto, Roldán Rodríguez, Nico Lapierre (who had made contact with Buemi at Rascasse), Javier Villa, Jason Tahinci, Borja García and Sergio Jimenez. The result: ‘only’ two safety car periods, almost a dozen shattered egos and even more broken bits of carbon fibre. Buemi ended this chaotic event in seventh place, a result he could be satisfied with, but his post-race comments suggested the contrary, as he rued his own struggles with the clutch of this strange new GP2 machine that he was still getting used to:

“I had a little problem with the clutch, I was too nice with it. My errors cost us time, in particular during the pitstop. Without them we would not have lost places during the start as well, so it is a little frustrating compared to how things went at the start of the weekend.”

ART team principal Frédéric Vasseur, despite his disappointment with the end result (di Grassi ended the race only fifth), was still quite impressed with how well the inexperienced Buemi had coped:

“Sébastien went exceptionally well in his first race in GP2. He worked well and asserted a challenge that can be very difficult to do in Monaco. But we cannot be satisfied with fifth and seventh places at the chequered flag when we were fastest in free practice. It is very regrettable that there was this shift in performance.”

Watch: Buemi gets a bit hands-on in his attempt to pass Lapierre.

With Ammermüller set to return to the ART cockpit for the Magny-Cours round at the end of June, Buemi’s focus was firmly on maintaining his F3 championship lead as the Euro Series moved on to Brands Hatch. He went quickest in practice, but would end up only eighth on the grid for race one. Making up places in the race would be difficult, the shorter Indy circuit layout that was being used not lending itself well to passing opportunities, and Buemi spent the race right on the coattails of Tim Sandtler and Yelmer Buurman. Seventh would be the final result, the win and championship lead going to Romain Grosjean, but seventh place also meant a front row start for the reverse grid race. On pole position for race two was series rookie Edoardo Mortara and it was he who led Buemi off the line at the start; he began to create a gap to the Swiss, but this was soon undone by the arrival of a safety car. He would still lead after the safety car pulled off the circuit, but Buemi remained close behind and the gap between the two was less than a second when Mortara was first across the line. With second place and with Grosjean eliminated in an accident at the start, Buemi was able to reclaim the championship lead.

The two great rivals – Grosjean and Buemi – are at the head of the field at the Norisring.

Next stop (after a test appearance at Paul Ricard for the Arden GP2 team) was the Norisring, where this time Buemi would be on pole, with title rival Grosjean in second. A botched overtaking move by the latter into turn one forced both drivers wide, which handed the lead and second place to Kamui Kobayashi and Nico Hülkenberg respectively. The Hulk ended his race with a spin, having been forced onto the dirt by an opportunistic move on the part of his teammate, Grosjean. It then started to rain, and Grosjean – still on slicks – lost control of his car on the now wet track, hitting Kobayashi, his other teammate. Luckily for Romain, it was the Japanese driver who came out worse, and the Frenchman now led from Buemi. The safety car was brought out, but this became a red flag following a collision between Buurman and Renger van der Zande. The race was soon restarted, and Grosjean won from Buemi, though one can only imagine how Grosjean’s ASM team were feeling that day. Hülkenberg stole the show by winning from eighteenth on the grid in race two, Buemi finishing second. Grosjean – ever the incident-prone driver in his younger days – was forced to retire after crashing out in the early stages, which allowed Buemi to extend his points lead to six.

One week later was the French Grand Prix at Magny-Cours. The F3 Euro Series formed part of the support programme for this race, so of course Buemi would be present. Front row starters Kobayashi and Grosjean had another incident in race one when the Japanese driver made a mistake at the 180-degree left hander on the last lap. Grosjean – seeing the opportunity to take the lead – lunged down the inside, but made contact and both were pitched into a spin. Kobayashi was able to quickly recover and take his first F3 victory, but Grosjean struggled to get going again and only just managed to hold onto second place by three tenths from Buemi. Race two brought Buemi’s podium streak to an end, finishing only nineteenth after a collision with Tom Dillmann. He would be back on the podium two weeks later at Mugello, but Grosjean dominated the first race from pole, which put the Frenchman clearly in front of Buemi in the championship. Buemi had to settle for fifth in the second race after making contact with James Jakes; Grosjean finished second, further extending his championship lead.

The next Euro Series round would be a fortnight later at Zandvoort, but before that Buemi would unexpectedly find himself back in GP2 with ART, as Ammermüller’s wrist was in pain again following an incident at Silverstone, and was expecting to miss the Nürburgring and Hungaroring races at least. The Nürburgring weekend saw Buemi qualify a modest eleventh for the feature race, and he made a very early exit upon colliding with Luca Filippi at the first corner after getting on the brakes too late. The sprint race went better in that he would see the chequered flag and set the fastest lap, but he had to serve a drive-through penalty for jumping the start and ended the race in 20th place; last but one, in other words, Andi Zuber receiving the wooden spoon. Buemi later admitted that the changing conditions over the race weekend made it difficult for him to find his pace.

Buemi’s intense season of racing in A1GP and F3, and substituting for others in, again, A1GP, Formula Renault testing and GP2, was about to become even busier, as he now had to fill in for Ammermüller in the capacity of test driver for Red Bull Racing at Jerez two days later. With the exception of two straight-line tests for the team earlier in the year, this would be Buemi’s first outing in a Formula 1 car since his demonstration run in the Arrows in 2004. He logged a best time of 1:22.565 and completed 78 laps of the 4.4km Spanish autodrome, meaning he had completed more than 300 kilometres of running in an F1 car, thus making him eligible for an FIA superlicence; Seb was now one step closer to achieving his dream of racing in Formula 1. Like his previous Arrows experience, he’d had fun:

“The power out of the turns feels good but the most impressive elements of the package are the way the car goes through the quick corners, which is so much better than anything else I’ve experienced. I also enjoyed the speed with which the car can change direction and the power of the brakes.”

Mark Webber took over for the second day of running, with Buemi back behind the wheel for the final day, setting a 1:20.318, the fifth fastest time. Overall, he had left a good impression on the team, in the words of chief engineer Ian Morgan: “Sébastien did a good job, making no mistakes, achieving good lap times and providing useful feedback.”

Then, finally, Buemi would be able to pick up his F3 campaign again at Zandvoort at the end of July, only a few days after the Jerez test and a week after his GP2 return. He qualified second for race one behind Grosjean, but a fast starting Kobayashi had the momentum going into Tarzan. He was perhaps too aggressive, as they made contact and the Sushi Chef’s Son from Amagasaki was shown a warning flag for his behaviour. The race soon settled down somewhat into another Grosjean-Kobayashi battle, with Romain coming out on top this time; Buemi had to settle for another third, the points gap growing to ten. A wet-dry reverse grid race saw Hülkenberg victorious from Buemi, who had had a poor start and stayed out a lap longer than might have been ideal when the rain began to fall on lap seven. He ended up stuck behind Cyndie Allemann for five laps before finally getting past, but he felt “there was no way I could have overtaken Hülkenberg anyway as he already was too far away.”

Buemi would be back in action again a week later for the Hungaroring GP2 round, which meant missing the Masters of F3 race being held at Zolder. He qualified a lowly fifteenth after running into issues with traffic on his first lap, making a mistake on his second and then being unable to set a competitive time at all due to the session being under yellow flag conditions. He then suffered a radiator problem which resulted in his stalling the car on the grid. This forced the field to go around for another formation lap, while the Swiss had to take to the pit lane in what would effectively be a start from the very back. He would move up to his original grid position of fifteenth and set the fastest lap, but because he had started from the pit lane, the point awarded went to the setter of the next fastest time, Karun Chandhok. The sprint race didn’t go much better, finishing seventeenth and last, but again setting the fastest lap and this time keeping the single point that came with it.

Despite a disappointing GP2 weekend in Hungary, Buemi could now rest for the summer break, having raced every single week between the 23rd June and the 5th August. A few days before the Formula Renault 3.5 season was due to resume at Spa on the eighteenth, it was announced that, with Sebastian Vettel having replaced Scott Speed at the Toro Rosso team in F1, Michael Ammermüller would be taking his fellow German’s place at Carlin in FR3.5. This allowed Buemi to keep his ART GP2 drive for the foreseeable future, and he would be returning to action on the 25th for the Istanbul round. He qualified tenth for the feature but had to stop the car with an issue on lap 28; he would go on to finish thirteenth in the sprint race.

Several days later, the A1GP circus was getting ready for the 2007-08 season, and Sébastien was back in action in testing at Silverstone alongside Neel Jani and Tom Dillmann; he set the third fastest time behind Germany’s Christian Vietoris and Great Britain’s Robbie Kerr. Despite this impressive showing, Buemi would not be partaking in the latest edition of the World Cup of Motorsport, and with all the racing activities in which he had been engaging throughout 2007, one wonders if it was merely a case of him wanting to rest for the winter.

The F3 season resumed with the Nürburgring round at the start of September; Hülkenberg was on pole, his first of the season, and went on to dominate the race. Surprisingly, it was Buemi’s hitherto uncompetitive teammate Edoardo Piscopo who started alongside the German and would be running second for much of the race. However, he was forced to ease off to save tyres, allowing third-placed Buemi to catch up, eventually getting waved past on lap 23 of the 29-lap race. In the end, Buemi did indeed finish second, his nemesis Grosjean in fifth. The two title rivals were second and third – Grosjean ahead of Buemi – in race two.

The following week’s racing: GP2. The venue: Monza. Sébastien Buemi qualified eleventh, but a race packed with incidents was in store, Buemi himself caught up in one of them when he collided with Kohei Hirate at Variante della Roggia and later on took to the gravel on the outside of the second Lesmo curve. He then lost further time during his pit stop on account of a missing wheel nut, re-joining in 18th. In the end though, he would finish seventh of just fourteen finishers; not counting fastest laps, Buemi had achieved his second points finish in the series. Starting from second in the sprint race, he was down to third before the Rettifilo after a lightning start from Bruno Senna, and lost another place to Giorgio Pantano the following lap, although he regained his position after Pantano spun in an attempt to pass race leader Ricardo Risatti. Buemi would lose further ground over the next few laps to championship leader Timo Glock, Luca Filippi and his own teammate, di Grassi. Soon, Pantano was back on Buemi’s tail, but Sébastien was able to keep the charging ex-F1 driver at bay for six laps, before Pantano slammed into the back of him at della Roggia, bringing an early end to Buemi’s day. Pantano carried on and finished sixth with a broken front wing, but was later disqualified for ignoring a black and orange flag. Frédéric Vasseur was none too pleased:

“(Buemi’s) race pace was very good and he was focused, but two drivers destroyed his good performances in both races. After several years spent in F3000, GP2 and F1 it is quite surprising that Pantano still makes beginners [sic] mistakes!”

A two-week break followed, after which Buemi headed to the mighty Spa-Francorchamps circuit in the Ardennes for the penultimate round of the GP2 season; he would qualify only fifteenth for the feature race, unhappy with a setup that gave him a great deal of oversteer. As ever, he tried to make the most of the situation, running as high as seventh, but finishing tenth after being a bit late in shutting the door on Karun Chandhok at La Source. Once again his sprint race was cut short, this time after his engine felt unwell and deposited oil on the circuit; Buemi was forced to retire and this also had the side effect of causing Marcos Martínez to spin on the gripless black stuff, and we don’t mean the tarmac.

Buemi’s 2007 season gets even busier as he takes on Ammermüller’s Red Bull testing role.

More F1 testing followed and once again it would be at the Jerez circuit in southern Spain. Buemi was in action for Red Bull on the second day, impressively setting the third fastest time before getting side-lined by transmission problems. Then it was on to his next race, also in Spain, but it would not be Jerez this time, it would be the Circuit de Catalunya near Barcelona. For our Swiss protagonist, race one ended with a crash on the wet track on lap seventeen; Grosjean initially finished third, but was relegated to sixteenth after his mechanics were found to be working on his car for too long on the starting grid. His ASM team later appealed the decision and he was promoted to eighth, giving him a point. Thus, very little ground was made by either driver in the championship. Race two saw a nine-car pileup after Buemi’s teammate Piscopo stalled on the pole position; Buemi ended this race scoring only one point in sixth, with Grosjean finishing outside the points and then getting disqualified for an infringement. There were now only two pairs of races left in the season, the gap between Buemi and Grosjean at five points, just as it was going into the Catalunya weekend.

The penultimate weekend of the 2007 F3 Euro Series season at Nogaro clashed with the GP2 finale at Valencia. As Buemi was still fighting for the F3 title that series would be taking precedence, and so ART brought back Mikhail Aleshin to take his place for Valencia. Race one at Nogaro would be a close ASM 1-2-3 with Grosjean leading his teammates Kobayashi and then Hülkenberg in an enthralling battle; Buemi could do no better than fourth. Race two showed he was not ready to give up, going from fifth to second on the opening lap, before race leader Mortara was forced to serve a drive-through penalty for jumping the start. Buemi was now controlling the race, but soon find himself under attack by Kobayashi; he kept the Japanese driver behind though, and would take what would only be his second victory of the season, having not won since the very first race back in April!

It would be two weeks before what was sure to be an exciting finale to the Euro Series season, but in the intervening period Sébastien was invited by ART to drive for them in the first post-season GP2 test at Jerez, setting the third quickest time on the first day behind Andy Soucek and Mike Conway, the latter also testing for ART. He also sampled a Trident on day two, but wound up only eighteenth.

The 13th October 2007, the first race of the final weekend of the season, held right where it all started on the Hockenheimring. On pole position: Romain Grosjean, his fourth race one pole of the year, the championship points gap: eight, the value of a race one second place; Buemi would have a difficult time overcoming that from his grid position of fifth. Grosjean ended up second in the race behind Nico Hülkenberg, but with Buemi not improving on fifth it was enough for the Frenchman to secure the title. Sébastien had lost out on another single seater championship, but his great rival of the 2007 season seemed honoured to have had him as an adversary, saying of their battle:

“It was one of the most intense of my career. (Buemi) is an excellent driver and a true competitor. He never gives up. We never really had the chance to fight on the track, but we were always close in the drivers’ classification. It makes winning this title all the more significant.”

With the pressure off, Buemi went on to win his final Euro Series race, moving up to second after a good start, before battling and passing Mortara to take an unchallenged lead, this after losing his right-hand mirror.

At the end of the month, Buemi tried his hand at becoming better acquainted with Dallara’s GP2/05 chassis in another test at the Paul Ricard circuit. He was in action for the first two of the four days over which the test was running; it was another impressive showing: fifth for DAMS on the first day, third for Arden on the second.

There was just one more race to round off a very busy 2007 season for Sébastien Buemi: The Macau Grand Prix. This time the team he would be representing was Räikkönen-Robertson Racing; his three teammates would be Stephen Jelley, Bruno Senna and Jonathan Kennard. He was provisionally fourth on the grid for the qualifying race, before being given a five-place grid penalty for ignoring yellow flags during the ever-chaotic qualifying session. A number of people stalled on the grid and Buemi, who the previous year was able to finish well thanks to the misfortunes of others, was himself caught up in an incident with the slow-starting Edoardo Mortara at Lisboa, ending both of their races. And so, Sébastien would be starting well down the order in 27th place for the Grand Prix. This went far better, as he scythed his way through the field to finish eleventh of 24 finishers. Not bad.

2008

Buemi making his Arden debut in GP2 Asia. (GP2 Media Service)

Buemi’s 2007 season was finished, and on the 13th December, he was confirmed to be racing for Arden International in a full GP2 campaign in 2008. This campaign would consist not only of the main European-based GP2 Series, but also the separate new GP2 Asia Series that would make up the pre-season. It was a deal that likely surprised very few observers, as Arden’s founder and managing director was Christian Horner, team principal of Red Bull Racing. The Red Bull Junior Team certainly has its benefits! A further show of confidence from Red Bull came a month later when Sébastien was confirmed as their official test and reserve driver for the 2008 F1 season. Around the same time Arden confirmed a sponsorship deal with Trust International and also announced Buemi’s teammate for the Asia series: A1 Team Pakistan driver Adam Khan; their other driver for the European campaign remained a TBA for the moment.

Pre-season testing for the GP2 Asia Series soon kicked off at the Dubai Autodrome, with the first race occurring on the 25th January at the same circuit. Regularly topping the timesheets was Romain Grosjean, Buemi’s F3 nemesis having earned himself a drive at ART. Was a repeat of their epic 2007 battle on the cards? Judging from the first race weekend of the season, the answer was a short ‘no’. Grosjean completely dominated, winning both feature and sprint, while Buemi could fare no better than seventh in the feature before being disqualified for a technical infringement, and got punted out by Marcello Puglisi in the sprint.

Three weeks later and it was on to Sentul in Indonesia for round two. This would turn out to be a controversial event mired by sub-standard marshalling and a crumbling track surface. A collision between Christian Bakkerud and Harald Schlegelmilch brought out the safety car, and it would be nearly ten laps before their vehicles were removed from the gravel trap. Buemi, who had qualified ninth, was able to take advantage of this, similar incidents and drive-through penalties to climb up the order. On lap 26, race leader Vitaly Petrov spun off on the broken tarmac, leaving Luca Filippi at the front, with Buemi second. Not content to play the supporting role, Buemi eroded this advantage and was four seconds away ten laps later. He continued to outpace Filippi until he had set the fastest lap and they began the final lap with 0.6 seconds separating them. Filippi held on by just a tenth to win, but so absorbed were they in their battle that neither of them seemed to take note of the chequered flag and carried on at racing speeds for another lap, almost colliding! However, it was soon found that Filippi had been using tyres allocated to his teammate, Hiroki Yoshimoto, and was disqualified from the race, thus giving Buemi his first GP2 win. The sprint race was slightly less eventful from Buemi’s perspective except for the fact that the chequered flag was not shown at the end, cars once again being forced to complete another tour, although this time they could at least blame somebody else. Buemi ended this rather aberrant race in seventh after a good battle with sixth-placed Ho-Pin Tung. It would be the last time GP2 cars raced on the Sentul International Circuit.

It was another month before the next race. In the meantime, Buemi had the chance to get behind the wheel of Dallara’s new GP2/08 car and set some promising lap times; the car was due to be introduced for the European season, the Asia series persisting with the old GP2/05. The 22nd March was the date for the resumption of the GP2 Asia action, and this time it was in support of the F1 Malaysian Grand Prix. Buemi, as Red Bull’s third driver, would be attending not only as an Arden GP2 driver, but also as a member of the Red Bull team. It would be his first time doing so, as he was forced to sit out the season opener in Australia with a throat bug. After a disappointing opening two weekends, Buemi’s teammate Khan had been replaced by Yelmer Buurman, who had already been signed by Arden for the European season. The feature race started well – and bizarrely – as Buemi took advantage of front row starters Grosjean and Chandhok stalling to take third behind Bruno Senna and Adrián Vallés. Then the heavens opened and, this being Malaysia, it would be coming down in stair rods; five cars couldn’t handle the new lake that was beginning to form where there once was a race track. With all Hell beginning to break loose, it was considered a wise decision to suspend the race. Vallés led from Buemi at the restart and the two would soon be fighting for the lead. This lasted to the pit stop phase and shortly beyond, when the Spaniard made an error on cold tyres and crashed into Buemi, taking both out; Vitaly Petrov picked up the pieces and won. The sprint race ended with another tangle between Buemi and Vallés.

Buemi finished behind Bonanomi in the final 2008 GP2 Asia race, ending the year as vice-champion. (GP2 Media Service)

With three of the five GP2 Asia rounds completed, it was back to the Middle East for the final two weekends in Bahrain and Dubai, each separated by a week. In Bahrain, Buemi qualified a modest eighth, but managed to hustle his way up to second behind Grosjean, who at this point was within touching distance of the title. He repeated this result in the remaining races, coming close to winning in the Dubai feature after a fierce struggle with Grosjean and his own teammate, Buurman. He was also a strong contender for victory in the sprint before a left front tyre issue put paid to his chances of passing eventual winner Marco Bonanomi and he found himself having to hold off Jérôme d’Ambrosio. At the end of it all, Sébastien was able to claim the runner-up spot in the championship, 24 points adrift of his former F3 rival, Romain Grosjean.

The main GP2 championship began at Catalunya only two weeks after the conclusion of the Asian series. Buemi’s season started out with a bang. Yes, he had a bang with the wall at turn eight in qualifying after getting caught out by a slower car, forcing him to take to the grass, after which the car escaped his control. Now being forced to start from the back of the grid, Buemi had to fight his way to some points, which he did, to his credit: seventh place and two points to be exact, which ensured a front row start for the sprint race to further make up for his qualifying troubles. He was controversially pushed onto the grass by aggressive rival Kamui Kobayashi, but no lawn-mowing would be the cause of an accident this time and Buemi held on. Grosjean also fought with them before having to serve a drive-through penalty for blocking Kobayashi. Buemi eventually ended the race second, right behind Kobayashi.

Round two was at Istanbul. There was the usual chaos at the start when Buemi was pitched into a spin by his good friend from the Sepang Asia race, Adrián Vallés. Another recovery drive was in order, with an exciting four-way battle for position thrown in between Buemi, d’Ambrosio, Adam Carroll and Pastor Maldonado. D’Ambrosio and Maldonado had to retire with technical issues, but Buemi and Carroll would find themselves with more company thanks to a safety car bunching up the field in the latter stages. This company came in the form of Javier Villa, who aggressively fought to defend sixth place from Buemi in particular. This battle ended with Villa losing two places after running wide, Buemi taking the three points while Villa reclaimed seventh after a dramatic move on Carroll on the final lap. Buemi made a great start in the sprint to line up right behind race leader Vitaly Petrov. He was lucky to be so high as eight cars tangled behind, the natural response to which was a safety car. The usual safety car procedure was followed and racing resumed once it re-entered the pits. One bizarre problem with this race was the issue of dogs wandering onto the circuit; Bruno Senna struck one, seriously damaging his suspension; the less said of the damage his canine victim sustained the better. Then another dog found its way onto the track and it was decided that the safety car would be called back out again, lest there be any more fatalities. Grosjean (who at this point was leading from Petrov and Buemi) stormed off into the distance at the restart, leaving the two podium contenders to scrap it out for best of the rest; that title going to Petrov by just four tenths.

Next up for Buemi was a frustrating test appearance in Red Bull’s RB4 at Paul Ricard, where his scheduled long run simulation was interrupted by rain showers. Then it was on to Monaco for the next GP2 meeting. Unlike the previous year, Monaco adopted the more conventional two-race affair seen in other GP2 events, as opposed to the single race that the series ran in 2007. The feature race ended in embarrassment for our friend Sébastien. Mirabeau is one of those corners where it takes a little bravery to try a pass, and some experience to judge when it’s possible to do so. Buemi most certainly possessed the former, but not so much the latter. An attempt to go up the inside of Giorgio Pantano where realistically there was no space to do so ended with the Italian facing the wrong way, the Swiss losing his rear wing and the rest of the field staging an LA traffic jam. The sprint race would be another game of damage limitation, ending in an eleventh place.

Watch: The traffic in Monaco is often bad, but not usually to this extent…

Buemi in action for Arden in the Silverstone round.

For Buemi, the next month would consist of no racing activity, only testing. The GP2 teams went to Paul Ricard, where he was rather impolitely crashed into by Karun Chandhok. Following this was a test day for Red Bull at Catalunya, which was more fruitful than his previous run for them before Monaco. Buemi also fulfilled his usual reserve driver duties (oftentimes the F1 equivalent of Waiting for Godot in this era of safety) in the Canadian Grand Prix. But then it was GP2 time again on the 21st June – the Magny-Cours round. The poor feature race streak continued with a retirement in race one, leading to a 21st place start for the sprint. Arden took quite a gamble for the second race by putting both of their cars on slick tyres; it had been raining and the track was still wet at the start. They were able to survive the initially difficult conditions and Buurmen took the lead with Buemi in tow once the circuit was beginning to dry and the competitors on wet-weather rubber were forced to pit. The Dutchman started to build a gap to his teammate, but this situation was soon reversed and Buemi passed him at Adelaide hairpin six laps from the chequered flag. At last he could celebrate his first GP2 win (Sentul Asia Series round notwithstanding), which he called the best of his career up to that point in the post-race press conference. Onto Silverstone, the halfway point of the season, and Buemi managed to reverse his poor feature race streak with a well-earned fourth place after a thrilling battle with Grosjean, Zuber, Senna and Chandhok. Unfortunately, the sprint race really did appear to be a reversal of fortunes from previous races, as he spun off on his installation lap.

Going into the Hockenheim weekend, it was announced that Buurman – who had not scored a single point apart from the Magny-Cours podium – would be replaced by Luca Filippi at Arden. Filippi, with his impressive GP2 record including one win and multiple podiums, could, on paper, have presented a greater challenge to the eighteen-year-old Swiss driver in the other car. In a word (or two): He didn’t. For their first race together Buemi qualified fourth, Filippi 1.7 seconds back in thirteenth. Sébastien became embroiled in a struggle for third place with Lucas di Grassi, Senna and Villa, which lasted until Buemi left the track in a late rain shower, his gamble to stay on slicks clearly not paying off this time. His now-regular sprint race recovery drive resulted in eighth, also inheriting the fastest lap of the race after Kobayashi was penalised for a collision with Diego Nunes.

Before Hungary, Buemi would be testing for Red Bull at Jerez, where he first drove for them twelve months earlier. He set the fifth fastest time on his single day of running and it was here that he first declared his ambitions of driving for Toro Rosso in 2009, then-current STR driver Sebastian Vettel having just been announced as part of Red Bull’s line-up for that season. Buemi told ITV: “For me my main objective is to try and finish well in the GP2 season this year, but then the objective is really to be in Toro Rosso next season.” The Hungaroring would be the site of Buemi’s best weekend of the year: He finished seventh in the feature race after a hard-fought battle with Mike Conway, which was followed by a peerless drive in the sprint race where he pressured fellow front row man Andy Soucek into making a mistake on lap twelve, going on to win by eight seconds from the same man. He must have really wanted that Toro Rosso drive!

The relative lack of bad luck continued in Valencia – Buemi finishing sixth on Hermann Tilke’s popular new street circuit – and then ended at the same venue, when a gearbox problem prevented him from getting off the grid on the warm-up lap for the sprint race. In the penultimate round at Spa, Buemi was slapped with a five-place grid penalty for ignoring yellow flags in qualifying, meaning he would be starting twelfth. A topsy-turvy race of changeable weather and safety cars allowed him to rise to fifth by the end. An equally unpredictable sprint race saw Buemi rise to second behind Soucek on the opening lap before getting held up on lap five by Marko Asmer, who was exiting the pits. Petrov and eventual winner Maldonado took advantage of this to get past poor Sébastien. He almost got overtaken by Grosjean too after a slow safety car restart, but the Frenchman took a bit too much kerb when he tried the move and fell behind again. Buemi spent the rest of the race hounding Petrov, but had to settle for fourth in the end.

There was now but one final round in the 2008 GP2 season, and, despite nothing being confirmed yet, it looked very likely to be Sébastien Buemi’s last in the series, with him being a top candidate for the vacant Toro Rosso F1 seat. The round in question was Monza, and he put in his best qualifying performance of the season, earning third spot on the grid behind championship leader Pantano and former ART teammate di Grassi. The feature race started in heavy rain behind the safety car; Buemi lost ground to Maldonado, but would regain his third place thanks to a drive-through penalty for Pantano, who crossed the white line at the pit exit. The Italian was not too bothered, as he was on course to winning the championship regardless. The final sprint race of the year saw Buemi in a battle for sixth between himself, d’Ambrosio and Senna, but he had to settle for seventh, just outside the points. His final 2008 GP2 finishing position: sixth in the championship, 50 points. Not bad, considering this was the best performance for an Arden driver since the inaugural GP2 season in 2005.

In late September, it was time for Buemi to show what he was made of in an “audition” test for Toro Rosso at Jerez. Another Toro Rosso hopeful was orphaned Super Aguri driver Takuma Sato, who, with his F1 experience, could have made a useful figure of comparison for a younger driver in Red Bull’s ‘B-team’. Buemi and Sato would each be driving on different days, which ended up making direct comparisons difficult, as it was dry for Buemi’s day and wet for much of Sato’s. Toro Rosso team principal Franz Tost was impressed with the Swiss at least:

“Sébastien did an excellent job. We prepared him for a busy day of testing and he did what we expected from him. He completed great lap times and worked hard and devoted with our team. He worked well with the engineers and gave us good feedback.”

It was announced that the final decision on Toro Rosso’s 2009 line-up would not be made at least until the end of the F1 season, of which four races still remained. Just before the Japanese Grand Prix, it was announced that Buemi would be making his Formula One début that weekend – as the medical car driver! He was given the position after the regular driver, Dr. Jacques Tropenat, had taken ill; Buemi would be driving the Mercedes C63 AMG Estate in the final three races of the F1 season. Once all of that was out of the way it was back to testing again in preparation for 2009. Sato was back, as was Buemi and regular Toro Rosso driver Sébastien Bourdais. The former two went fastest on the first day of testing in Barcelona (Sato in front), while they also tried out Bridgestone’s new-for-2009 slick tyres. Buemi was in the top four on both of the remaining two days, and was thoroughly satisfied with the result, commenting: “I’m really happy with how testing went overall, the team did a good job and I think I did too, which could be important for my future!”

Testing at Jerez again in December, Buemi was regularly at the very top of the timesheets, proving he really wanted that Toro Rosso drive. A brief switch to the Red Bull a week later saw similar results, before continuing that run at Toro Rosso again. And so did 2008 end.

Formula One

2009

Buemi’s confirmation at Scuderia Toro Rosso actually came by mistake, as recently departed co-owner Gerhard Berger accidentally dropped his name in an interview with Swiss magazine Blick; the official confirmation came four days later: Sébastien Buemi would become the first Swiss driver to race in Formula One since the infamous Jean-Denis Délétraz did so for Pacific Racing in 1995. At Toro Rosso, Sebastian Vettel would be a tough act to follow after famously winning the 2008 Italian Grand Prix for them, but Buemi was quick to play down expectations:

“Coming in just after Vettel gives a bit more pressure, but he has improved the team, so my feeling is hat [sic] I’m grateful to him for doing that. Of course I will do my best to live up to the standards that he set. The rules have changed a lot so it will be very different anyway. We have to wait for the season start to see where we are. I don’t think too much about what Vettel did or what I should do. Certainly there will be comparisons all year long but I can live with that.”

Testing resumed again at Portimão, Buemi consistently going quickest again. On the 6th February, his teammate was finally confirmed: Bourdais would be staying. Four days later the next test of the year kicked off at Jerez, and this time there was a mixture of old and new machinery. Buemi went quickest again on the first two days in the previous year’s Toro Rosso STR3, the new car yet to be unveiled.

Fast forward to early March, and all of the F1 teams with the exception of Brawn and Toro Rosso had shown off their new and different-looking 2009 cars. This situation changed on the 9th March, when the covers came off the new STR4 in time for the final pre-season test at Barcelona. Bourdais would be the first one to try out the new kit, before Buemi took over on day three. He was now near the bottom of the timesheets, but the concern was mileage before raw pace, given that this was the first time the STR4 had broken cover. The fourth and final day brought similar results and then that was it until round one in Melbourne. As it turned out, he would be the only rookie in the field, the driver market having remained relatively stable. His hopes and expectations for his début?

“I don’t have any expectations. I want to finish the race, that’s my focus – saying that scoring points wouldn’t be fantastic would be a lie, but it is not my main objective. I want to learn a lot about the car, and in the past Melbourne has been a race with many accidents and casualties, so to finish the race would be a good start.”

Buemi on début for Toro Rosso in Australia. It couldn’t have gone any better as he beat his teammate and got himself a couple of points. (F1 Fanatic)

Due to the STR4’s lack of mileage, Buemi likened his first practice outing to an “off-season test”, and the team struggled to find a setup that suited the Albert Park street circuit. Qualifying proved that Toro Rosso’s 2008 zenith was behind them, both drivers getting knocked out in Q1. Buemi – who had missed out on a spot in Q2 by just half a tenth – could be content with beating teammate Bourdais though. He also beat both Force Indias and the Renault of Nelson Piquet, Jr., and would be moved up to thirteenth on the grid after the Toyotas were thrown out of qualifying for running illegal rear wings, and after Lewis Hamilton was penalised for changing his gearbox. His own words on Melbourne’s “accidents and casualties” would ring true, with seven cars exiting the race, five of them due to accidents. The last of these, involving Vettel and Robert Kubica, brought out the safety car, which led the field to the chequered flag, only the second time in F1 history this has happened. Buemi was eighth of these, meaning a point was scored on his début. This tally was doubled after Hamilton’s disqualification following the infamous ‘Liegate’ controversy. With seventh place, Sébastien Buemi had become the first Swiss driver to score points in Formula One since Marc Surer at the 1985 Italian Grand Prix.

Malaysia was next on the agenda, and a disappointing qualifying where he went off at turn eleven saw F1’s only rookie start last. His ill fortune continued in the race, losing his front wing, which necessitated a pit stop on lap three. This race is an infamous one in recent F1 history, with Southeast Asia living up to its reputation for trying to drown its inhabitants from the skies; what started as a grim shower on lap nineteen had turned into a biblical deluge on lap 31, and the drivers were having trouble keeping their cars on the track, outboard motors unfortunately not allowed under F1 regulations. Buemi was one of the victims of the storm and promptly spun out of eleventh place. As a small consolation he would still be classified sixteenth, as the race was red-flagged a couple of laps later due to the severity of the weather and the darkening of the skies.

The Chinese Grand Prix saw a great performance by Buemi to reach Q3 and tenth place. He then made a great start to dispatch Hamilton and Räikkönen. He was up to fifth by lap fifteen, some of his competitors having pitted. An incident involving Kubica and Jarno Trulli brought out the safety car. An embarrassing incident then occurred when Buemi ran into the back of Vettel; the Swiss damaged another front wing after making contact with the Red Bull. He was due to pit anyway, and spent a portion of the post-safety car stretch of the race in eighth and holding off Fernando Alonso. The former double world champion eventually got past, only to spin and let Buemi back in front. Eighth would be Buemi’s final position, another point in the bag.

It all goes horribly wrong in Spain. (Getty)

A more anonymous Bahrain Grand Prix followed, where Buemi again out-qualified his French teammate despite a mistake in the final sector, but finished seventeenth after getting debris from a first corner incident stuck in his front wing. The European season then kicked off in Spain, a race where teams traditionally brought their first car upgrades. Buemi achieved his aim of qualifying within the top fifteen despite running into problems with traffic in Q2, but a rather big incident at the start of the race would mean an early exit for him. It began when Alonso pushed Nico Rosberg onto the run-off at the first corner. Trulli was forced to take avoiding action and ended up in the gravel and spinning; he was then ploughed into by Adrian Sutil. This caused Buemi to brake hard and Bourdais, unable to react in time, slammed into the back of him; both Toro Rossos were out.

Monaco was next, and Buemi qualified strongly again in eleventh, though once again he was compromised, this time by a mistake at the final corner. He lost out to Piquet at the start and, in an attempt to repass the Brazilian at Sainte Devote on lap eleven, recreated his own teammate’s move from Spain. Piquet made an interesting remark: “I’m very angry because Monaco’s a long race and that’s why these young drivers need to be careful with what they’re doing.” This coming from a driver only three years Buemi’s senior and who had only been in F1 for one year himself. Nevertheless, Buemi took full responsibility and apologised for his error; the Toro Rosso team even emailed an apology to Renault.

Turkey would be a struggle, with the Toro Rosso unable to get the Bridgestones (the options in particular) working to optimum temperatures. Eighteenth would be Buemi’s starting place, twentieth Bourdais’. He finished fifteenth, and little else can be said. He found a silver lining in this, saying “for me, after the last two races, it was a good experience to finish the Grand Prix today and get more mileage”.

And so it was on to the British Grand Prix at Silverstone and the struggles continued. Buemi could not find a setup that suited him well in practice, but expressed hopes that it would all go better than Turkey on race day. It didn’t. He qualified last and therefore got beaten by his teammate for the first time on a Saturday. Another anonymous race followed, finishing eighteenth and last.

Halfway through the season, the German Grand Prix at the famous Nürburgring followed. Seventeenth was Buemi’s starting position, returning to his Bourdais-beating routine despite getting hampered by traffic. He expressed his hopes of rain mixing things up for the race, but the weather gods were not listening and it remained dry throughout. He finished right in front of Trulli in sixteenth.

Over the summer break it was announced that Sébastien Bourdais had parted ways with Scuderia Toro Rosso. His replacement would be the latest driver fresh off the Red Bull conveyor belt: Nineteen-year-old Formula Renault 3.5 driver Jaime Alguersuari, who was set to become the youngest driver in F1 history at the Hungarian Grand Prix. Very fresh, indeed… Come the Hungaroring weekend Buemi qualified eleventh, which became tenth after accounting for Felipe Massa’s serious accident; new boy Alguersuari was at the very back. While qualifying went swimmingly, the main event of the weekend would not be smooth sailing. Buemi spun on lap 39, losing positions to Fisichella and ‘the new kid’. He made a pit stop on that lap and spun again later on, eventually finishing the race in sixteenth and last. Buemi had been beaten by his much less experienced teammate, although he could perhaps take some comfort in the fact that it was down to driver error rather than a total lack of pace. Still, the young Spaniard was rather close to Buemi in that regard.

Following on from Hungary was the summer break, followed by F1’s second trip to Spain in 2009, at Valencia. Buemi arrived at the circuit with an unintentional new look after a communications breakdown between himself and a Faenza hairdresser saw him with shorter hair than he would have liked. Practice was a rather painful experience for him, the scorching track temperatures making for an uncomfortably warm cockpit. In fact, Buemi burned his right foot, so hostile were the conditions. He would be able to qualify though, and he outpaced his new teammate by a full second and got into Q2, earning fifteenth on the grid. However, it did not take long for his race to be ruined. Early on in proceedings, he got caught up in a melée involving himself, Timo Glock, Luca Badoer (Massa’s injury replacement) and Romain Grosjean, who was now joining his arch-nemesis from F3 in the big leagues at Renault; Badoer was spun in the wrong direction and Buemi rear-ended Glock. Some unhappy drivers were forced to pit, Buemi included. He spent much of the rest of the race running at the back before his left front brake disc had had enough and wanted everybody to know, so it exploded, forcing the young Swiss fellow using it to spin out of the race at turn twelve. How rude.

The Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps brought with it sixteenth on the grid, and this time Alguersuari was closer, in seventeenth. Thanks to a multi-car incident at Les Combes, (which also happened to involve his teammate) Buemi was up to twelfth by the conclusion of the first tour of the 7km Ardennes circuit; he ran as high as sixth before finishing twelfth. He later voiced his suspicions of having picked up debris from the lap one incident, which he believed slowed him down in the early stages.

Monza would host the final European race of the season, and the place of Toro Rosso’s famous 2008 win brought contrasting fortunes in 2009, with both drivers finding themselves locking out the final two rows of the grid, although in Buemi’s case his lap was compromised when Hamilton, who was on a warm-up lap, failed to allow the twenty-year-old past at the Rettifilo, forcing him to miss the chicane. Another afternoon of anonymity followed this, which ended bizarrely for Sébastien. A crash on Hamilton’s part brought out the safety car on the final lap; it failed to pick up race leader Rubens Barrichello, and the Brazilian won at full racing speed. Buemi showed his inexperience again by following the safety car into the pit lane when it withdrew, causing him to lose a lap in the process. Luckily, this didn’t affect his position of thirteenth.

There were now four races left and all of them flyaways. First stop was Singapore for F1’s second ever night race. The Toro Rossos struggled in practice, but they turned that around in qualifying with fourteenth and seventeenth on the grid, Buemi once again ahead of Alguersuari. Buemi moved up to twelfth at the start and everything was running smoothly until a refuelling problem at his second pit stop cost him time. This was followed by a gearbox issue later on, his car coincidentally being rolled into the garage at the same time as Alguersuari, who suffered a brake failure.

Buemi gets a bit out of shape at Suzuka. (F1 Fanatic)

Japan was next and, after two years of Fuji hosting the Grand Prix, Suzuka was the venue. Practice was largely disrupted by rain, with the two Toro Rossos being the only ones to complete a time in the first hour of FP2. Buemi then went quickest in the final practice session before he was toppled by Trulli. Qualifying was quite eventful for the Swiss driver, crashing out at Degner in Q1 only to get going again to return to the pits and repair the damage so he could set another time. He was given a reprimand and a five-place grid penalty for his actions. He followed this up with another crash in Q2 after setting a time that was good enough for him to partake in the final part of qualifying. There would be no time for reparation on this occasion, so he had to make do with tenth plus a grid drop. In the end, he lost only three places due to a number of other drivers getting penalised for ignoring yellow flags in Q3. The good pace shown in qualifying would not be built upon in the race, as Buemi slipped to the back at the start and had to retire on lap twelve with a failing clutch.

The penultimate round of the season was at the Interlagos circuit in Brazil, and Buemi had some surprises in store, going second in FP2, followed by an excellent qualifying performance to go sixth on the grid, having also gone quickest in the first two parts of qualifying. He lost position to Rosberg and Kubica at the start, but also gained thanks to one incident involving Sutil and Trulli, and another involving Webber and Räikkönen. He ran as high as third during the race and finished a very respectable seventh, his first points since China.

This strong late-season run continued in the first ever Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at the new Yas Marina circuit. Buemi ran well inside the top ten in practice and planted the car tenth on the grid on his 21st birthday. The race was notable for a battle with Kubica; they touched and the Polish Renault driver spun. In Kubica’s own words:

“We nearly touched when braking into the chicane. He first moved to the left and blocked the inside of the left hander. When I moved to the right he pushed me over the high inside kerb of the right hander section of the chicane and I spun. He did not leave any space at all.”

Sébastien had a differing view, simply saying his “fight with Robert was quite fair, as I think I left him enough space.” He ended the 2009 season with another eighth place, giving him sixteenth in the championship. It was all in all a good début season; he had out-qualified his teammates in every race bar one. There were no giant-killing performances of the calibre Vettel achieved in 2008, but then it could be argued that the STR4 was simply not as competitive as its predecessor. Red Bull seemed to agree that Buemi performed sufficiently well, and gave him a contract extension for 2010 a week after Abu Dhabi. It would be a long time before his teammate was confirmed though and rumours began to run wild, with Bruno Senna, Nick Heidfeld and even Ralf Schumacher named as candidates by the media, but on the 22nd January Alguersuari was also given an extension.

2010

Over the winter, Buemi began an intense fitness program to remain in shape for the new season, and moved house from Bahrain – where he had relocated to avoid National Service in Switzerland – to the popular F1 drivers’ home of Monaco, which would shorten the distances between races considerably (the European ones, at least), not to mention the distance between himself and his family in Switzerland and the Toro Rosso team base in Italy.

Testing for F1’s Diamond Jubilee year kicked off in February and this time Toro Rosso had their new car ready in time. The STR5 was the first designed by Toro Rosso themselves, their previous offerings having been designed by Red Bull Technology, a third party outfit set up so that Red Bull and Toro Rosso could run almost identical chassis. The loophole that allowed this to happen was closed, however, and the two Red Bull-owned teams had to come up with their own solutions. The first day of testing at Valencia did not go well, Buemi getting side-lined by a gearbox issue. Apart from this, the pre-season went rather smoothly, going second quickest on the second day of the Jerez test on the 11th February. By the time the pre-season was over Buemi was his usual optimistic self as round one in Bahrain approached, saying on the final day of testing in Barcelona “Overall, I think we are in good shape and now I’m looking forward to the first race to see where we stand compared to everyone else.” In an interview with F1 Racing, he made one aim for the season clear: “I want to prove to Red Bull that I should drive for Red Bull Racing in 2011. I want to drive for the big team.”

Bahrain proved that Toro Rosso were not much more competitive than they were in 2009. Buemi’s running was limited by technical problems in practice; he got into Q2 and out-qualified his teammate by nearly a full second on the circuit’s ‘endurance’ layout. His start was not great and he dropped behind Alguersuari, where he would remain for much of the race until he was side-lined by an electrical problem in the latter stages.

Traditional season opener Australia was round two, and it would not go any better than Bahrain. Buemi ran well in practice and qualified twelfth, only to find himself taken out by Kamui Kobayashi’s Sauber on the opening lap. With Toro Rosso having not scored any points in 2010 it was on to Malaysia for round three, where a topsy-turvy qualifying of changeable conditions allowed both drivers to slip into Q2. Buemi qualified thirteenth, but felt he could have done better after a mistimed switch to intermediate tyres; he had still out-qualified Alguersuari again. Unfortunately, he made contact with Kobayashi on the opening lap, damaging his front wing. He soon complained of heavy understeer, but it wasn’t until he made his second pit stop that the team decided that changing it was the best strategy; he finished eleventh.

A most unusual incident occurred in first practice for the Chinese Grand Prix. Having spent much of the session in the pits owing to a brake problem, Buemi eventually emerged for some much needed running. Under braking for the hairpin both of his front wheels flew off – one nearly hitting a cameraman – and he slid into the Armco. It was soon discovered that a right-front upright failure precipitated the accident and luckily no one was hurt. The rest of the weekend was less eventful, but still produced some talking points. Alguersuari out-qualified Buemi for the first time, the two lining up twelfth and thirteenth. Buemi had another early exit on the opening lap after being collected by an out-of-control Tonio Liuzzi, who had a brake problem. This string of bad luck prompted Buemi to ask Toro Rosso for a new chassis in the hopes of ending the curse that the existing one had brought!

Watch: Buemi’s front wheels go their separate ways.

Fortunes would not improve in Spain. Buemi did return to his usual routine of beating his teammate, although they were close with just a hundredth of a second separating them in qualifying. Yet another first lap incident would mar Sébastien’s race after a coming-together with Pedro de la Rosa demoted the two of them to the back of the field. He spent the rest of the race ahead of only the drivers representing the new Lotus, HRT and Virgin teams that had entered the sport at the start of the year. Buemi eventually recorded another DNF due to a hydraulic issue.

Thirteenth would be Buemi’s qualifying position in Monaco. He was unhappy not to have made Q3, having run in the top ten in that morning’s free practice. He was finally able to run a trouble-free race in front of his teammate for a change, and he finished eleventh, which became tenth after Michael Schumacher was penalised for overtaking Alonso under safety car conditions; thus did Sébastien achieve his first point of the year.

Buemi was upbeat going into the Turkish Grand Prix despite injuring his right elbow after jumping over a railing; he qualified fourteenth, once again ruing the fact that the STR5 was not quite able to reach Q3. The start went relatively well and he passed de la Rosa into turn two, only to then run wide and allow Nico Hülkenberg through. A re-passing attempt did not go well and Buemi ended up with a puncture, ruining another race. Sixteenth would be his final position.

The Canadian Grand Prix, the first and only race led by Sébastien Buemi. (LAT)

Following Friday practice in Canada, young Sébastien was not his usual upbeat self, commenting that Toro Rosso “don’t seem very competitive at the moment.” Helmut Marko also expressed his disappointment in Buemi’s performance in the year thus far; with Alguersuari having closed the gap, he remarked it was “time for [Buemi] to prove his talent. If he does, this will ensure his place next year at Toro Rosso.” With Mark Webber having earned a contract extension with Red Bull, another year at Toro Rosso was all Buemi could hope for now. There was added pressure in the form of Red Bull reserve driver Daniel Ricciardo, who had previously been mooted for a 2011 drive in Red Bull’s ‘second team’. Qualifying produced the standard midfield result of fifteenth, but the race went a great deal better than early pace might have suggested. Alguersuari once again out-dragged him at the start, but this situation changed rather quickly and Buemi was back in front. On lap fourteen he moved into the lead of the race (other drivers had pitted), a “nice feeling” in his own words, becoming the youngest driver ever to do so, before pitting himself at the end of the lap. A virtually trouble-free afternoon where he briefly fought with Schumacher’s Mercedes and ran with a broken exhaust was rewarded with an eighth place and four points, moving him ahead of Alguersuari in the standings. Suddenly Marko was less doubtful about his Swiss protégé, commenting “That is the Buemi we want to see. Aggressive, controlled and super-fast, even with a broken exhaust.”

Back to Europe for the continent’s eponymous Grand Prix on the Valencia Street Circuit, Buemi only just missed out on Q3 by mere hundredths and he was once again left feeling he could have been in the top ten shootout, claiming to have lost two tenths after being held up by a slowing Barrichello. He started eleventh in the race, which became tenth after Vitaly Petrov struggled with excessive wheelspin. Sébastien ran well within the points positions virtually all race, although there was a brief scare when he almost ran into Hülkenberg in the pit lane. He finished the race eighth on the road, but was then penalised along with several other drivers for speeding under safety car conditions; this demoted him to ninth. He was naturally disappointed at this, reckoning that he “could have finished sixth, but I made two mistakes which have cost us four points”, referring to the Hülkenberg incident and a lock-up which allowed the late-charging Kobayashi past in the dying moments.

The European season continued with the British Grand Prix. The Toro Rossos – led as usual by Buemi – were only sixteenth and seventeenth on the grid. It was another frustrating race for the Swiss driver; he ended up stuck behind Liuzzi after his sole pit stop and finished twelfth. Days later, Toro Rosso officially announced that both Buemi and Alguersuari would be retained for 2011, this coming not long after Renault had expressed interest in Sébastien. Perhaps some other time…

Former GP2 teammates Buemi and di Grassi on-track together at Hockenheim. (F1 Fanatic)

Hockenheim next and Buemi was an impressive seventh quickest in a wet FP1, but FP2 saw both him and his teammate slip back towards the rear, Buemi reasoning that the team needed to find a better dry weather setup. Qualifying saw Alguersuari as the man in front for only the second time, Buemi for whatever reason unable to take full advantage of rapidly improving track conditions in Q2. The race saw yet another early retirement for Buemi. He got a good start, but Alguersuari was late on the brakes into the hairpin and slammed into the back of his teammate. Alguersuari lost his front wing, Buemi his rear. Both had to pit for repairs, but Buemi had to come in again on lap two with his damage apparently being terminal.

The Hungarian Grand Prix was the first race of the year where Alguersuari was competing at a track he had previously experienced in an F1 car, so both Toro Rosso drivers were on what could be considered more or less equal footing. Practice showed Alguersuari ahead, but come Saturday it was advantage Buemi again, qualifying two places in front of his teammate in fifteenth, Liuzzi splitting them. In the race, Buemi was squeezed out in the first corner by Schumacher, causing him to lose several places. A safety car period brought him back behind the seven-times world champion, but he would make up no further ground and finish twelfth.

Spa brought an end to the summer break. Gearbox issues in first practice limited Buemi’s running, though with rain plaguing the session it was felt that he was not missing out on a great deal. A wet-dry qualifying saw Buemi earn an initial starting position of fifteenth, before he was given a three-place grid penalty for blocking Rosberg; he would only lose one place in the end due to penalties for other drivers as well. He was also out-qualified by the improving Alguersuari again. The now almost obligatory first lap incident occurred at the always tricky La Source, where contact with another driver resulted in damage to his diffuser, causing the car to become “undriveable” in his own words. He ended a tough race thirteenth, which became twelfth after Alguersuari was penalised for cutting the Bus Stop chicane; the Spaniard was tenth on the road.

The European season came to its traditional conclusion at Monza. Buemi was content with fourteenth in qualifying, if slightly frustrated to be just three hundredths off Kobayashi directly in front of him. Kobayashi would have to start from the pit lane, however, so Buemi at least gained that place. He was up to tenth quite early on and ran in that position for much of the day, before losing out in pit stops to Barrichello after running into traffic. Thus, Buemi finished a frustrating eleventh, just outside the points.

Singapore was first of the end-of-season flyaways and Toro Rosso brought their interpretation of the infamous F-duct that was all the rage in 2010. A dead bat greeted the Toro Rosso team as they set up in their garage, which they took as a good omen. It didn’t help matters much though, as Buemi’s qualifying was spoiled by traffic and he ended up fourteenth on the grid. First lap contact (yes, really) with Heikki Kovalainen damaged Buemi’s car, which began to suffer from understeer. The front wing was changed and he then spent a good portion of the race behind Petrov. Unable to pass him, a late-race decision to pit for soft tyres to gain a performance advantage did not pay off, and Buemi finished a lowly fourteenth of sixteen finishers.

“Where’s everybody else?” The Toro Rossos were among the few who bothered to venture out on track in opening practice for Suzuka. (Getty)

The 2010 Japanese Grand Prix was infamous for severe weather conditions disrupting track action. Only two drivers – Alguersuari and Glock – set lap times in the almost flooded final practice session and the two Toro Rossos concentrated on practising standing starts on the empty grid. Qualifying was pushed back to the Sunday morning before the race due to the weather, and Buemi found himself held up by a Hispania; he was knocked out of Q1 in eighteenth place. There was another first lap incident, but our friend Sébastien was not involved for a change. A mistake from Petrov took himself and Hülkenberg out, which precipitated a similar incident involving Massa and Liuzzi. The safety car was called and Buemi was fifteenth at the end of the first lap. He found himself battling an early-stopping Rosberg after the safety car pulled in and was subject to a brave overtaking move by the Mercedes driver around the outside at 130R. It looked impressive, but Rosberg then ran wide and Buemi reclaimed the place. He spent the remainder of the race running well in the midfield and was rewarded with tenth, his first points finish since Valencia.

Another brand new race in Formula One followed Suzuka and that was the Korean Grand Prix at the isolated Korea International Circuit in Yeongam, a “nice circuit” according to Buemi. As with Singapore and Suzuka, Alguersuari again out-qualified Buemi, the Swiss driver having compromised himself on his single flying lap in Q2. The race began in torrential conditions under the safety car, before race control opted to suspend running after just three laps. The race was eventually restarted, again behind the safety car, and after fourteen laps of this situation the race got underway properly and Buemi lost track position to Liuzzi. An incident between Rosberg and Webber brought the safety car out yet again and Buemi took the decision to pit for intermediate tyres. After this he got himself involved in some entanglements with other drivers. First, he spun Kovalainen’s Lotus whilst attempting to pass the Finn and a couple of laps later he misjudged his braking into turn three and hit twelfth-placed Glock’s Virgin, taking himself out of the race with quite a bit of damage. The stewards took a dim view of this behaviour and gave him a five-place penalty for the penultimate round in Brazil.

Brazil had another changeable qualifying and again Buemi was out-qualified by his teammate, even before factoring in his grid penalty, a situation he blamed on a switch to intermediates that was perhaps timed too early. He made up for this somewhat with a lightning start in the race where he got past three cars and from nineteenth on the grid he was pleased to achieve a finishing position of thirteenth.

All that was left now of the 2010 Formula One season was the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at Yas Marina. There were more mistakes from Buemi as the pressure from his improving teammate mounted. A spin in practice was followed by a brush with the wall at turn nineteen in Q1 and he was knocked out, Alguersuari going through to Q2. He made another amazing start and passed five cars on the opening lap before the safety car was brought out due to a collision between Schumacher and Liuzzi. Buemi felt he lost out on a good result here to his teammate, saying:

“The team decided to bring in Jaime for a tyre change and keep me out during the Safety Car period. I think my team-mate’s strategy proved to be the better one as there was no tyre degradation, as he was able to pit and catch up with the Safety Car. So I’m a bit disappointed, because I feel that if I had been on a different strategy I could easily have finished in the points.”

Buemi, who finished fifteenth, may have been correct in his assessment of how he might have done, as Alguersuari, who started just one place in front of him and was slower off the line, finished ninth.

In any case, the 2010 season was over and Sébastien Buemi had finished sixteenth in the championship with eight points – three more than his teammate, but Alguersuari had been much closer than he was in 2009 and even matched and beat Buemi at the tail-end of the year. If Buemi wanted to supplant Mark Webber at Red Bull in 2012, he would have to step up his game. It was also confirmed in late November that Daniel Ricciardo would be Toro Rosso’s third driver in 2011 after a promising showing in the Young Driver Test. Ricciardo would be given free practice outings in the Toro Rosso, taking over one of the incumbent driver’s cars on an alternating basis, which would put them under a lot of pressure. Buemi summed up his sophomore year with the following:

“It was a very tough season, the toughest. What many people did not realise is that we were in a similar position in many ways to the three new teams. Like them, this was the first year we raced a car that we had designed and built entirely ourselves, because the new rules meant we could no longer use the same chassis provided by Red Bull Technology. This required a lot of work, taking on more staff and learning to use our new wind tunnel. So a tough time and finishing last of the ‘established’ teams in the championship was the logical conclusion. We intend to do better in 2011.”

2011

And so, Buemi prepared himself for his third season at Toro Rosso, which looked to be his hardest yet. Marko had stated that he expected to see Ricciardo in F1 by “no later than 2012”. Buemi changed his physiotherapist, got a new chief mechanic and told Blick in an interview with them “I know I must become better everywhere next season”. Testing began at the Ricardo Tormo circuit in Valencia on the 1st February, where Toro Rosso unveiled their new car, the STR6. Alguersuari was first to drive it before handing the keys to Buemi for the second afternoon. He ran for three hours in the new KERS-equipped STR6 before mysteriously stopping twenty minutes from the end of the session; the cause remains unrevealed. The following day he had the car all to himself and completed 73 laps of the 4km circuit. The rest of pre-season testing went generally trouble-free but for a damaged part costing Buemi three hours on day one of the final test in Barcelona. At the end of testing Buemi proclaimed that Toro Rosso were “among the first five teams”. If this was to be the case, then points would not so tall an order as it was the year previous.

Bahrain was scheduled to be the season opener for 2011, but it was cancelled due to the violent protests that had recently erupted there; it was originally postponed until later in the season before being cancelled. Australia would instead return to its traditional place as the curtain raiser for Formula One in 2011. Ricciardo took over Alguersuari’s car in FP1, where he came within a tenth of Buemi’s fastest time. The same result came when Alguersuari stepped in for FP2. Qualifying in particular showed improvement for the team, with Buemi making it into Q3 for the first time since 2009, tenth his final starting position. The race saw something of a breakdown in relations between the Toro Rosso teammates, as Alguersuari touched Buemi’s car, causing minor damage that affected the latter’s handling. This caused Buemi to briefly lose a place to Paul di Resta before repassing the Force India rookie a few laps later. He stayed in the points positions for most of the race before fighting Massa’s Ferrari for ninth place to the end, ultimately losing out to the Brazilian, who was running on fresh Pirelli rubber. Buemi arrived at the chequered flag in tenth place and, similarly to his début race at the track two years earlier, he earned even more points through disqualification, a technical infringement for the Saubers promoting him to eighth. There was trouble in paradise though, as after Nick Heidfeld had exited the race with damage to his car early on he blamed one of the Toro Rossos, but couldn’t tell which one had caused it; Alguersuari was quick to point the finger at his teammate. They were not on speaking terms when they made their flight to Kuala Lumpur for the next round.

In Malaysia, Buemi was able to get back at his teammate by beating him in a shopping trolley race held as a promotional event for Giant, a supermarket chain that was sponsoring Toro Rosso for this weekend. In the race weekend proper it was Buemi’s turn to sacrifice some of his practice time for Ricciardo. When he was back in the car for FP2 he began to struggle to get a fast lap together due to yellow flag conditions. This was followed in qualifying by a peculiar incident which saw his left sidepod come off. Luckily the team were able to repair it as the session was red-flagged and he qualified twelfth on the grid, right in front of Algerusuari. Both drivers made a good start, passing Rosberg and getting close to Kobayashi and Schumacher. Alguersuari had passed Buemi, but the order was reversed on lap eight. Buemi ran in the lower half of the top ten before effectively ruining his race when he accidentally disengaged the pit lane speed limiter when he came in for his first pit stop; for speeding in the pit lane he was given a stop/go penalty. Despite this he was still able to finish in front of his teammate in thirteenth.

Watch: Buemi’s Toro Rosso auditions for The Full Monty, hastily disrobing in Sepang.

Onto China, the Toro Rossos set a blistering pace in qualifying, going seventh and ninth. Alguersuari had out-qualified Buemi for the first time in 2011, but the gap was just half a tenth. Race pace was positively lacking, however, as Buemi completed the first lap in thirteenth place after a poor start and at some point began to feel a suspicious amount of understeer; it was soon discovered that there was damage to his front wing, causing him to make one stop more than he would have liked. After that he fought with the Williams, finishing right behind Barrichello in fourteenth.

After this was what would turn out to be F1’s final visit to Istanbul for the Turkish Grand Prix. Friday was wet, but Saturday was dry and the Toro Rossos disappointed in qualifying, going even slower than what they had managed in the final practice session. They finished at the bottom of the table in Q2 with Buemi starting sixteenth. In the race he was able to turn this around and pull off some spectacular overtaking moves. He was on course to finish an amazing seventh before losing track position to the Lotus Renaults, who were on fresher tyres, therefore finishing ninth. Following this exceptional performance Toro Rosso technical director Giorgio Ascanelli called Buemi “a driver with a future.”

Buemi was satisfied with a more normal eleventh place in qualifying for the Spanish Grand Prix, saving himself a set of soft tyres by not making a second run in Q2. He made another great start, passing three cars, although two of them – Massa and Jenson Button – would repass him. In a reverse of what happened in Turkey, race pace was what the Toro Rossos seemed to be lacking, and Buemi ended his race only fourteenth behind the Force Indias.

Ever a tough place to keep the car between the lines (or, in this case, the barriers), Monaco saw Buemi clip the barrier at Tabac in Thursday practice. It was another race where qualifying well was an issue, with Buemi only seventeenth, although he at least didn’t suffer the embarrassment of getting out-qualified by both Lotuses as his teammate did! He ran well in the race, despite a scare when di Resta ran into him at the hairpin, netting the Scotsman a drive-through penalty. Buemi spent most of the race just shy of the points in eleventh, before benefitting from an incident between Hamilton and Pastor Maldonado to finish tenth – another point in the bag.

One-lap pace was difficult to find again two weeks later in Canada, Buemi qualifying just fifteenth. What was to follow would be the longest race in F1 history. A significant portion of the famous 2011 Canadian Grand Prix was run under safety car conditions due to the severe weather, which made it difficult for Buemi to make up for his low grid position. It would work out well for him in the end though, an early switch to slick tyres paying off with a tenth place. Alguersuari, who started from the pit lane, finished eighth for his first points of the year and Toro Rosso’s first double-points finish since Australia 2009.

Valencia would bring yet another disappointing qualifying performance for the team as a whole, with Buemi leading the charge from seventeenth on the grid, his Q2 performance being somewhat complicated by a red flag caused by a technical failure bringing Maldonado’s Williams to a halt on the circuit. He ran well early on in proceedings, making up three places on the opening lap, before his pace began to mysteriously drop off and he could not finish any higher than thirteenth; it was later discovered that he had been hindered by a piece of debris that had made itself at home on his car.

Speculation began to run rife over the Toro Rosso drivers’ futures between the European and British Grands Prix, particularly over that of Buemi, as Alguersuari had performed admirably by taking points finishes in Canada and Valencia, arguably his best F1 drives yet. There was some good news, as Red Bull were able to bargain for Ricciardo to take Narain Karthikeyan’s place at HRT, meaning neither of the Toro Rosso boys would be obliged to give up any of their FP1 drives. Rain was forecast for the Silverstone weekend, and poor timing meant the Toro Rossos were both eliminated in Q1; Alguersuari was eighteenth, Buemi nineteenth. The race would be an exciting affair as the two youngsters fought their way up the rankings, disposing of Barrichello and Kovalainen on the opening lap, and adding Petrov to their list of victims not long afterwards. And so the race proceeded in this manner until approximately half-distance, when an opportunistic Paul di Resta made a lunge down the inside of Buemi at Brooklands. The Force India driver struggled to get on the brakes on the wet track, promptly running into the side of the Swiss and damaging the Toro Rosso’s left rear tyre. Buemi tried to limp back to the pits, but was forced to pull off at Chapel after the tyre completely disintegrated. Alguersuari went on to pick up another points finish in tenth, making life more difficult for his teammate, but Marko, who is otherwise tough on his drivers, was quoted saying “Buemi is definitely better than his current results.”

Germany brought further bad luck, with a mistake in FP1 sending Buemi into the gravel, and a misfire due to a fuel pressure problem in FP2 meaning he could get no running in. To make matters worse, he would be stripped of his qualifying time (which would otherwise have put him sixteenth on the grid) after an irregularity was found in the fuel sample given to the FIA. Running a wet-weather setup in what would turn out to be a totally dry race, he ended the first lap in eighteenth after disposing of several backmarkers and also taking advantage of a collision between Heidfeld and di Resta. He had made it up to fifteenth when, in an effort to keep the charging Heidfeld behind him, Buemi forced the Renault driver off the track at the chicane and they made contact, Heidfeld ending up off the track and out of the race, Buemi with a puncture, effectively ruining his chances of progressing any further up the order. He blamed the German, claiming he drove into him, but the stewards were unconvinced and gave Buemi a five-place grid penalty for him to serve in Hungary.

Watch: Buemi and Heidfeld have an on-track altercation at the Nürburgring.

The Hungarian Grand Prix, where Buemi overtook almost anyone in his direct vicinity on his way to a fantastic eighth place.

In Hungary Buemi opted to save his super-soft tyres in qualifying and went eighteenth quickest, his penalty dropping him to 23rd alongside Jérôme d’Ambrosio. After a troubling few races, Hungary would perhaps be the best performance of the season for young Sébastien, making up an amazing ten places on a damp track on the opening lap, Alguersuari among the drivers he picked off. He continued to make up positions through brilliant overtaking and strategic decisions on a day where the weather could not make up its mind. Buemi finished eighth in the end, a great way for him to head into the summer break.

The holidays ended with Belgium, where it was announced that Jean-Éric Vergne, another Red Bull Junior earmarked for a Toro Rosso drive in 2012, would be making free practice appearances for the team after the conclusion of the World Series by Renault season in October. With Tost also making comments to the effect that three years would be the maximum any single Toro Rosso driver would get, and with Mark Webber being simultaneously confirmed at Red Bull for 2012, it was clear that time was running out for both Buemi and Alguersuari. With the two drivers locked into Red Bull contracts until the end of 2013, it would be difficult for either of them to even look outside of the Red Bull system for a 2012 drive.

In the meantime, they got down to business at Spa, where they produced exceptional qualifying performances; Buemi just shy of a spot in Q3 in eleventh having made an error, Alguersuari being a show-stealer in sixth. They failed to deliver in the race though, but it was through no fault of their own. Alguersuari was eliminated at La Source by Senna, whilst Buemi had made a great start by moving up to sixth by that point. He was able to hold on to the place and keep up with Alonso and Hamilton in front, only for him to join his teammate on the side-lines after Sergio Pérez drove into the back of him, an incident that severely damaged his rear wing and forced him to pull into the pits and retire the car.

Practice for Monza included among its events a crash for Buemi at Parabolica, one which he put down to his own human error. Given how much track time this cost him, Buemi would be satisfied with sixteenth on the grid. In the race he took a knock from behind in the chaos at the Rettifilo caused by Liuzzi losing control of his HRT. He moved further up into the points and finished tenth after a battle with Senna, but there was some bad news for him: Alguersuari had finished seventh, which put the Spaniard ahead of Buemi in the championship.

Buemi celebrated his 50th Grand Prix in Singapore. We say “celebrated”, but the man himself was actually rather dismissive of the milestone, calling it “just a number”. He lost more practice time after a brush with the wall at turn 21, and qualified a respectable fourteenth, ahead of Alguersuari as he often had been. A race where tyre degradation was found to be high and downforce low ended with Buemi twelfth at the chequered flag.

There was a scare for Buemi in Suzuka as he was called before the stewards for speeding under yellow flags. Fortunately, he was cleared of any potential transgression and he proceeded through the rest of the weekend as normal. The Toro Rossos ran well in practice, but were unable to translate that into qualifying pace, with the two drivers occupying the eighth row, Buemi ahead as usual but losing half a second due to getting too much kerb at the Degner curves. He had another of his increasingly famous lightning starts and was up to eleventh at the end of lap one, but disaster struck after he completed his first pit stop, when an improperly attached wheel came off in the Esses. Buemi was forced to retire the car and Toro Rosso was fined €5,000 for this unsafe procedure.

Vergne joined the team in Korea for the first of his practice drives, with further appearances scheduled for Abu Dhabi and Brazil, skipping the Indian Grand Prix on the new Buddh International Circuit to allow the race drivers as much time as possible to acclimatise themselves to the track. Alguersuari was the unlucky one who had to step aside in Yeongam, Buemi in Abu Dhabi and as an added twist whoever would have the lowest number of points after that point would have to give up their car in Brazil. It is still unknown what would have happened in the event of a tie. It didn’t seem to matter which driver missed their precious FP1 running this time, as laps were limited by rain. Qualifying saw Alguersuari lead the way in eleventh with Buemi thirteenth. The start did not go well for Buemi, as he had a coming-together with Kobayashi at the first corner and lost four places, but he seemed to have little trouble making up that lost time, finishing ninth and right in front of di Resta. Unfortunately, Alguersuari had had another cracking performance, finishing seventh and putting more points between them.

Both Toro Rossos made it into Q3 in the inaugural Indian Grand Prix, with Buemi returning to his traditional Saturday Alguersuari-beating routine in ninth. Both drivers had an unusually bad start, but they quickly turned that around and passed Senna and Sutil in the early laps. Buemi had worked his way back up into the points before the Toro Rosso’s Ferrari engine failed on lap 25; Alguersuari had scored more points in eighth, extending the gap to eleven points. With two races left and the season now beginning to draw to a close the rumours surrounding Toro Rosso began to run rampant once more. With the slim chances of staying at Toro Rosso for 2012 hinging on his performances Buemi proclaimed “In Abu Dhabi and Brazil you will again see a strong fight from me, even though I have much to lose in the battle. But I will never give up.” On his actual chances of remaining at Faenza he only said “I can only hope.”

Buemi leads a number of cars in the Brazilian Grand Prix, his final race. (LAT)

Buemi out-qualified Alguersuari yet again in Abu Dhabi, slotting into thirteenth on the grid. Three laps after the start and he was in tenth, but once again reliability let him down when a loss of hydraulic fluid forced him to retire from seventh on lap nineteen. And so it was on to Brazil for what could be the decisive race of Sébastien Buemi’s career, though it looked very likely at the time that it would be his swansong. As per the deal, Vergne took over Buemi’s car in FP1, as the Swiss driver was behind Alguersuari in the standings. Buemi then couldn’t drive in FP3 due to another hydraulics issue. He was frustrated to be out-qualified by Alguersuari, but out-dragged him at the start. An average race partly brought on by the fact that the team took a gamble on a wet-weather setup for rain that never arrived ended in an anonymous twelfth. Thus, Buemi ended the season a career-best fifteenth in the championship with fifteen points, but he had been beaten by a teammate for the first time, Alguersuari in fourteenth with 26 points.

And so the 2011 season ended – in frustration, but the statistics from Buemi’s third year were impressive: He had made the most overtakes (112), gained the second most positions in the first sector of the race (29 to Schumacher’s 34), the second most positions on the opening lap (30 to Schumacher’s 40) and equal-most overtakes after lap one (82, shared with Pérez). The question remained though: Where would Buemi be in 2012? There was silence from Toro Rosso for two weeks following the end of the season, and with many of the seats for the coming season already filled it was becoming increasingly clear that both Buemi and Alguersuari were depending on remaining with the Faenza squad. But finally, on the 14th December, a decision was announced: Sébastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari would not be driving for Toro Rosso in 2012, with Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Éric Vergne taking their places. Franz Tost paid tribute to his now-former drivers:

“I must […] thank Sébastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari for all their hard work over the past three seasons. They have delivered some excellent performances which have helped the team move forward and develop. We wish them well for the future. However, one has to remember that when Scuderia Toro Rosso was established in 2005, it was done so with the intention of providing a first step into Formula 1 for the youngsters in the Red Bull Junior Driver programme. It is therefore part of the team’s culture to change its driver line-up from time to time in order to achieve this goal.”

After Formula One

2012

For the first time in almost a decade, Sébastien Buemi went into a new year without any kind of race contract. On the 5th January, however, he received what could be considered the consolation prize for all of his time at Toro Rosso: the position of reserve driver for both Red Bull and Toro Rosso. He was pleased to still have his foot in the door, so to speak:

“It’s good to remain with Red Bull for another year and have this opportunity with the championship-winning team,” Buemi said. “I would prefer to be driving at the races of course, but working with Red Bull on the development of their car and providing them with feedback throughout the season is the next best thing.”

Unfortunately, with the lack of in-season testing there would be little opportunity for Buemi to get any meaningful running at the wheel of an F1 car, so to keep him busy he would attempt to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps by securing a drive in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. On the 10th February it was reported that he would indeed be racing on the Circuit de la Sarthe as part of Toyota’s return to Le Mans in a TS030 Hybrid shared with fellow ex-F1 racer Anthony Davidson and Super GT driver Hiroaki Ishiura (the latter was later injured and replaced by Stéphane Sarrazin); a nice fit, one might say, as his grandfather had been a Toyota dealer for over 40 years. He had also been a rumoured candidate for their F1 team for 2010 before their withdrawal from the sport. Toyota would also be entering another car to contest in the rest of the post-Le Mans World Endurance Championship races, driven by Alex Wurz, Nico Lapierre and Kazuki Nakajima.

The first long-distance test for the new car was conducted a week later at Paul Ricard, Buemi’s first real taste of what it’s like to drive an endurance racing machine. His impressions:

“It was nice to discover more about the endurance racing environment. I have been in the driving simulator at TMG so I had an idea of what to expect but the reality is always a bit more complex. From a technical point of view the car is very impressive although we still need to make progress in some areas, which is normal at this stage of testing. I did some long stints and learned about new aspects of endurance racing, like driving at night, managing fuel consumption and adapting my driving style. I can see that every detail is important in order to be fast in this discipline.”

Buemi ultimately never drove in the 6 Hours of Paul Ricard, but he was at least able to get some autograph signing in!

To better prepare him for Le Mans, Buemi joined the Boutsen Ginion Racing entry for the opening round of the European Le Mans Series: The 6 Hours of Le Castellet. Joining him in their Oreca 03-Nissan were Bastien Brière and ex-F2 man Jack Clarke. Things did not go well, unfortunately, as a technical problem prevented them from setting a time in qualifying and lasted only 27 laps in the race proper with Brière at the wheel. It turned out to be a waste, Buemi never even getting to drive the car.

The No. 8 in action at Le Mans, a race sadly cut short by an accident for teammate Davidson. (Reuters)

And so, it was back to testing, the second long-distance test for Toyota in May at Motorland Aragón going off without a hitch. Another successful test later in the month was followed by preparations for the great race itself. On the 3rd June, both TS030s took to the famous 13.6km circuit, where Buemi easily ran the ten prerequisite laps to allow him to officially take part in his first Le Mans race; he also set the third fastest time of the morning session, which bode well for Toyota’s chances when considering this was their first race. Whether they could actually beat the Audis over the day was another story. Indeed, the front row of the grid was filled by two of the four Audis, but the No. 8 car which Buemi was driving was able to beat the other two and take third thanks to a scintillating lap by Davidson. Sarrazin had the honour of taking the start, handing over to Buemi at the car’s third pit stop. In the first hour of action the two cars were running an impressive third and fourth, dropping to fourth and fifth in the second hour, the No. 8 being the one behind; Buemi lapped very quickly and ran as high as second in the fourth hour of the race. Just before the six-hour mark the other car, driven by Lapierre, took the lead. Moments later though, Davidson, who had just taken over from Buemi, had a massive accident on the Mulsanne Straight whilst lapping one of the GTE cars. This put the Englishman in hospital with a back injury and the No. 8 car out of the race.

After this, there was to be no more racing for Buemi for the remainder of the 2012 season, the best he could do being his appearances for Red Bull on F1 weekends; much like in 2008, only minus the GP2 drive to keep him busy. In October, the usual silly season rumours were in swing, and Buemi was tipped as a possible candidate for a vacancy at Force India alongside Paul di Resta, with further rumours of a potential Lotus drive surfacing in December.

2013

The New Year of 2013 brought with it the confirmation that Buemi would not be racing in F1 after all, as Force India were reported to be more interested in Jules Bianchi and Adrian Sutil. He was re-confirmed as Red Bull’s reserve driver and once again voiced his determination to be in F1 in 2014. In February, Toyota confirmed their entry for the 2013 edition of the WEC, with Buemi this time getting a full season in the No. 8; he was reunited with Davidson and Sarrazin.

Buemi on his way to a podium in the opening round of his first full WEC season at Silverstone.

The first round of the season was at a track Buemi was familiar with: Silverstone. Practice for the six-hour race was hit by rain, which did nothing to dampen anyone’s spirits and in qualifying Toyota locked out the front row, with the No. 8 car starting second. They lost out to the Audis early on due to difficulties in getting their chosen Michelin tyre compound up to temperature. A more suitable compound of tyre was fitted to the No. 8 when Buemi took over, with Davidson having the honour of bringing it to the chequered flag in third place.

The next round was at Spa, where Toyota would be introducing their new 2013-spec TS030, though only the No. 7 crew would be driving it in the meantime, the No. 8 drivers sticking with the 2012-spec car. They were both fairly close, but the new beat the old by qualifying fourth, the No. 8 crew starting fifth. Buemi was driving the No. 8 at the start and they were strong podium contenders all race before Buemi was forced onto the grass and scraped the barriers while lapping a slower car in the latter stages, causing damage to the Toyota. They finished fourth in the end, Audi locking out the podium.

The #8 does battle with the #2 Audi at Le Mans.

After Spa was the 90th anniversary edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans and this time both Toyota crews would be running the 2013-spec car. Le Mans testing went well; fourth and fifth would be Toyota’s qualifying positions, this time with the No. 8 leading the way. Davidson was behind the wheel for the start and fought for third in the early stages, briefly dropping to fifth after making a pit stop. During Buemi’s stint, two of the three leading Audis ran into difficulties, lifting him into second place. For the rest of the race, the focus of the No. 8 crew was keeping up with the leading Audi of Allan McNish, Tom Kristensen and Loïc Duval, the damp conditions allowing the Toyota to remain competitive. After 24 hours, the No. 8 car crossed the line in second place, one lap down on the aforementioned Audi, this after a race full of changing weather conditions, incidents (including one early on that tragically took the life of Aston Martin driver Allan Simonsen) and safety cars.

After this, Toyota made the decision to scale back their LMP1 program to a single car, the No. 8, to allow them to better focus on making developments for 2014. The next race was Interlagos and things were going well, with the car going fastest in practice. A close-fought qualifying where they came within two tenths of pole secured a third place starting position. Unfortunately, Sarrazin, who started the race, was sent into the barriers at Curva do Sol early on when he was hit by the lapped No. 32 Lotus. The Frenchman was able to bring the car back to the pits, but the damage was too severe to repair, and Buemi and Davidson ended up not racing at all.

The 6 Hours of Austin on the Circuit of the Americas went better. Buemi got limited running in the rain-hit practice, but Sarrazin was once again involved in an incident in qualifying, compromising the Toyota crew’s chances of challenging the Audis; they started third out of the four LMP1 crews starting the race and speaking of the race, it was a great one for Toyota. Buemi took the start and moved up to second following an early safety car period and entered a close battle with the No. 1 Audi, which then became one less problem to worry about when it pitted with damage. After that, the focus was firmly on the leading No. 2 car. Victory eluded the No. 8 crew once more, but the gap was relatively close at 26.617 seconds.

Fuji saw the No. 7 car and its crew come back for Toyota’s home race. The No. 8 went quickest in opening practice again and also got on the front row alongside the No. 1 Audi. The race was an anti-climactic, even farcical affair. Davidson (starting the race in the No. 8) refuelled on his way to the grid, but missed the pit lane exit window by five seconds, forcing him to start the race from the pit lane, a race which would be entirely held in safety car conditions due to heavy rain. The field toured the circuit for eight laps before the red flag was flown. Two hours later, proceedings got underway again behind the safety car, and once again the race was suspended after eight laps. It was decided that the race would be abandoned, the win going to the No. 7 Toyota after the Audi that had started on pole pitted under the safety car.

The Toyotas ran well as usual in the penultimate round in Shanghai, the two cars taking pole and third; the No. 7 ahead with the No. 1 Audi splitting the two cars. Davidson immediately put pressure on the Audi at the beginning of the race, eventually dispatching it and closing in on Lapierre in the No. 7. The No. 8 got ahead on strategy and was on course to win the first race for its three drivers before a suspension failure in the latter stages put an end to their chances of glory.

The No. 8 on its way to its first win in the final round at Bahrain. (Toyota Motorsport)

All that was left now was Bahrain. Practice went as well as ever, and for once it was indicative of how the grid would look for Toyota, the two cars locking out the front row. Buemi started the race from second and remained in that position behind Lapierre for the first hour, before the latter had a spot of bother disposing of traffic, allowing the No. 8 to take the lead. And so it would remain. The No. 7 eventually dropped out with engine trouble, leaving Buemi to take the chequered flag by over a minute from the No. 1 Audi, his first win in international racing since the 2008 Hungarian GP2 round. Few could think of a better way to end the season, Buemi didn’t seem to:

“I’ve had to wait to win my first endurance race so I am really delighted with today’s victory. It is a reward for the whole team after a hard season. I am so happy with the result; now we can all go home and enjoy the winter a bit then focus on next year. To finish the season with a win was really important to show the car was competitive. We are still quite new to endurance and I think we can be proud of this win and work hard next year to achieve more.”

To round off 2013, Buemi was once again confirmed as Red Bull Racing’s test and reserve driver for the coming F1 season.

2014

2014 would see the introduction of an exciting new racing series for electric single seaters: Formula E. As part of their promotion for the championship, FE CEO Alejandro Agag announced the Formula E Drivers’ Club, effectively a pool of drivers saying they like the idea of an electric racing series and would put themselves forward for a drive. Among the first eight members announced were Marco Andretti, Karun Chandhok, Tonio Liuzzi, Adrien Tambay, Ma Qing Hua, Lucas di Grassi, Takuma Sato and, of course, Sébastien Buemi, but more on this later…

As part of Toyota’s big sweeping changes for the 2014 WEC season, they would be swapping Sarrazin and Lapierre around, so now Buemi’s teammates in the No. 8 car were Lapierre and Davidson. Toyota also introduced a new car, the TS040, which they naturally hoped would beat Audi and the returning Porsche quite often. Buemi was rather upbeat going into his second full season of endurance racing:

“We are quite confident we have a good car but the important thing is to see where we are compared to the others. We have been alone for our tests so far, with no point of comparison. We’ll only find out for sure when the racing starts. When that happens, we will be targeting victories, particularly at Le Mans.”

The No. 8 leads the Audis at Silverstone. (Toyota Motorsport)

Practice for round one at Silverstone went well enough to say that Toyota were able to prepare for the race. This was followed up with pole position for the No. 7 car, the No. 8 stranded in fifth after a super capacitor-related problem restricted their running. The race could not have gone better for them though. Buemi drove the car at the start and used his fearless overtaking prowess to quickly move up to third on the opening lap. Forty minutes into the race, it began to rain and Toyota split their strategy, putting the No. 7 car on full wets and the No. 8 on intermediates. As it turned out, intermediates were the better option, and so Buemi went into the lead. The No. 8 stayed in the lead for the remainder of the six hours, or, as it turned out, five hours and 20 minutes, as poor weather caused the race to be red-flagged, giving the No. 8 crew their second victory, the RAC Tourist Trophy and, most crucially, the championship lead.

The No. 8 car was on the front row at Spa behind the No. 14 Porsche. Lapierre took the start and held on to second before handing over to Buemi, who took the lead and started to build an unassailable lead; another win in the bag.

The No. 8 in the 2014 edition of Le Mans.

The run of winning form continued in Le Mans testing, but could Buemi win the 24 hours? Qualifying put the two cars first and third on the grid, the No. 7 being the one to take Toyota’s first Le Mans pole since 1999. Lapierre was driving the No. 8 at the start and overtook the Porsche in front of him, a situation that did not last for very long, as he took a trip through the gravel and found himself battling two of the Audis. Then it began to rain, and as Lapierre braked for the first Mulsanne chicane he lost all grip on the wet surface, hit a group of GTE cars and ploughed into the barriers. He was able to limp back to the pits for repairs, which took 50 minutes and, though it was a long race with a long way to go, it was pretty safe to say that this was the end of the No. 8’s chances of winning. Lapierre handed the car over to Buemi, who re-joined eight laps down on the still-leading No. 7 and outside the top thirty; he had climbed back up to the top twenty by the time it was Davidson’s turn at the wheel. Eventually, they were back into the top four, which turned into a podium place under the worst of circumstances, as the No. 7 had to retire from the lead with an electrical problem. Third was the No. 8’s final finishing position, and its drivers extended their championship lead.

Buemi was super-quick in Formula E testing. Could he be a title challenger? (F1 Fanatic)

Three months separated Le Mans from the next round of the championship at Austin. In the meantime, it was announced that Buemi would be driving for the e.dams Renault team alongside Nico Prost in Formula E’s historic first season. This announcement came just days before the cars saw action for the first time at Donington Park, where Buemi immediately set the pace, eventually recording the quickest time on all but one of the five test days. Then came the first round of the championship in Beijing in September, where Buemi hit the wall at turn six of the brand new street circuit in practice. He qualified ninth, which became eighteenth after a change of gearbox. His overtaking abilities were sadly not of much use on the tight 3.4km circuit and he sustained a damaged rear wing. He came in to switch to his second car and, knowing it would not last the rest of the race, attempted to score some points by setting the fastest lap, but he failed in this endeavour, that accolade going to Takuma Sato.

The WEC season continued at Austin just one week after Beijing. Jet lag was clearly no issue, as Buemi’s efforts helped put the No. 8 Toyota on pole by over a second in damp conditions. Buemi easily led the start, with Wurz in the No. 7 taking second from the Porsches. This turned into disaster at around the one-hour mark, as a heavy rainstorm caught out Lapierre, who had just taken over from Buemi, and he went into the gravel; new driver Mike Conway in the No. 7 had also gone off. The race was soon red-flagged, but the two cars lost a lap before that. What followed was a brilliant recovery drive by the No. 8 crew to get back on the lead lap and take third place. The No. 8 trio still held the championship lead by eleven points from race winners (and Le Mans winners) André Lotterer, Benoït Tréluyer and Marcel Fässler.

For “personal reasons”, Lapierre would be skipping the Fuji round, which then turned into the rest of the season, then he left Toyota altogether. So, the No. 8 now had a crew of just two F1 rejects in Buemi and Davidson. Even one man down, there was no stopping the No. 8 in its chase for the title, with pole and victory in the bag by the time the weekend was out; and even after dropping to third at the start Buemi was able to reclaim an unbreakable lead before the opening lap was finished.

Buemi made his return to China for the Shanghai WEC round. The No. 8 duo had to start second this time around, after setting an identical lap time to the no.14 Porsche that was on pole. It would not be long before the Toyota dominance resumed and, thanks to an early pit stop following a collision between the No. 47 KCMG Oreca-Nissan and the No. 51 AF Corse Ferrari, the Toyotas were leading 1-2, Wurz in front in the No. 7. Buemi, in the No. 8 at this time, was not satisfied with this, and promptly overtook Wurz for the lead, staying there to take yet another victory. The WEC title was now within reach for both Buemi and Davidson.

At last! Buemi celebrates his first car racing title at the end of the 2014 WEC season.

Bahrain, the site of Buemi’s first WEC win, was the penultimate round this time, and the No. 8 was second on the grid behind the No. 14 Porsche once more. Disaster struck as the No. 8 was forced to pit for sixteen laps with a broken alternator, throwing away what likely would have been another win. Buemi and Davidson were eventually eleventh after the six hours were up, but it ultimately did not matter where they finished: Sébastien Buemi, after ten years of fighting, was finally a champion in cars, and a world champion at that. For Davidson, also, it was his first motor racing title since 2001.

Before the final WEC round at Interlagos was the second round of the Formula E season in Putrajaya. Buemi’s qualifying time was annulled after it was found that his car was underweight, so he had to start at the back. This wasn’t good enough for the new World Endurance champion, so he punched his way through the field and onto the podium in third place.

Toyota were quick as ever in Interlagos practice and the No. 8 was third behind a Porsche front row lockout, with only traffic to stop Buemi from taking pole. He spent the early stages duelling Marc Lieb in the No. 14 Porsche, while also cutting into the lead of Mark Webber in the No. 20. Eventually, the No. 8 moved to the very front of the field, but the No. 14 fought back and won thanks to a late safety car period eliminating their exciting battle. With second place, Toyota secured the Manufacturers’ Championship. Buemi seemed rather pleased with his season:

“[…] it’s been a great year for us, so obviously to become world champion in Bahrain was something very big for us as individuals and also for the team because Toyota has been trying very hard in the past few years to win races and championships. It was a great moment. We were leading the race in Bahrain until we had alternator issues, so it was a bit strange to win the championship by not finishing in a good position in that race but still it was a great feeling and last week in São Paulo we won the constructors’ championship, so it’s been a really good season for us.”

Buemi at the wheel for e.dams and on his way to winning his first ePrix in Uruguay. (AFP Photo)

This was not the end for the winter though, as Buemi still had a Formula E season to worry about. Round three took place in Punta del Este in Uruguay and for once things went rather well: He qualified fourth and was up into second after a couple of safety car interruptions, which turned into the race lead when Nick Heidfeld had to serve a drive-through penalty. A final safety car period following a crash for Matt Brabham set up a tense final two laps, with pole sitter Jean-Éric Vergne taking full advantage of his FanBoost to try and pass Buemi, before the race threw up another twist when the Frenchman, in his first race, ran out of battery, effectively handing Buemi his first Formula E win.

2015

Going into the New Year, Buemi was once again reconfirmed as Red Bull Racing’s test and reserve driver and he headed off to Buenos Aires for the next Formula E round. He seemed determined to win again, going fastest in practice and taking pole position by just two hundredths from ex-Toro Rosso teammate Jaime Alguersuari. He held off the fast-starting Heidfeld, who tried to gain an early advantage by using his FanBoost, and he stayed in front until just after a safety car period thirteen laps from the end; almost as soon as the green flags flew, Buemi hit the wall at turn eight, throwing away a chance of taking the championship lead.

Two months later, it was Miami. Buemi qualified fourteenth after a spin and finished thirteenth after an anonymous race won by teammate Prost, who went into the lead of the championship. Then it was off to the opposite coast of the US for the next round on an abbreviated version of the historic Long Beach street circuit. Buemi took another pole but his fastest time was soon deleted after it was found that he had exceeded the 200kW power limit in qualifying. His next best time was allowed to stand but that was only good enough for tenth. It is rare for a low grid placing to put Buemi at as much of a disadvantage as other drivers might expect, and he made another charge, this time to take fourth place after an epic scrap with Lucas di Grassi.

Before the next ePrix were the first two rounds of the WEC. Buemi’s title defence, now with the No. 1 on his car and with Kazuki Nakajima partnering himself and Davidson after Lapierre’s departure, didn’t start off ideally, with fourth on the grid in Silverstone followed by third in a race where they were no trouble to the Audis or Porsches.

Spa brought further disappointment, with the No. 1 car going one man down after Nakajima suffered a fractured vertebra in a crash in practice. They also found themselves unable to match the German marques in qualifying (save for the No. 9 Audi, which they beat). Then, the No. 1 suffered electrical problems, which cost a total of 20 minutes in repairs and dropped it to fourteen laps off the lead and in fourteenth place. The game of damage limitation saw the No. 1 eventually finish eighth, but this, coupled with Toyota’s Silverstone performance, did not bode well for the Japanese manufacturer’s title defence prospects.

None of this affected Buemi’s motivation for the Monaco Formula E round, which, like Long Beach, was run on a truncated version of the world-famous street course. Both Buemi and Prost were on the pace in practice and it was the former who took pole. He was lucky to start so high, as a massive accident on the first lap involving seven cars took out Alguersuari and Bruno Senna, with the rest of the victims returning to the pits to switch to their second cars. Buemi led the whole race despite pressure from championship leaders di Grassi and Nelson Piquet, Jr. With pole and the win, Buemi was now ten points off the top of the table himself. He had also become the first two-time winner in the series.

Next was the Berlin ePrix, which was held at Tempelhof Airport. Buemi topped practice and qualified third behind title rival di Grassi and shock pole sitter Jarno Trulli. Di Grassi took the lead after a mistake by Trulli and Buemi got right on the Italian veteran’s gearbox initially, only to drop back due to Trulli’s mysterious source of pace. Even more mysterious was di Grassi’s speed, as he started to put daylight between himself and the rest of the field. Buemi eventually got past Trulli with the aid of FanBoost, but by then it was too late to catch di Grassi. During the pit stop phase, he lost second to Jérôme d’Ambrosio after a very quick stop for the Belgian, and so Buemi finished third. However, he was promoted back up to second after it was found that di Grassi’s Abt team had made illegal modifications to his front wing, disqualifying the Brazilian. This had the side effect of putting Buemi second in the championship, just two points off new leader Piquet.

The hastily added Moscow ePrix was held between Le Mans testing (where Nakajima made his return) and the 24-hour race itself. Buemi was fourth on the grid and ran in that place for much of the race behind Vergne and di Grassi, Piquet disappearing into the lead. Buemi’s energy-saving ability was on display here, eking out an extra lap of battery power over his rivals before coming in to switch cars. Unfortunately, his stop was ten seconds too long after e.dams misread the minimum pit stop time as 68 seconds instead of 58. He reemerged in Heidfeld’s path, for which he would get a 29-second penalty, and controversially passed Vergne by cutting the chicane on the final lap, this only after the Andretti driver had made a slow exit from the corner. Buemi finished third on the road, but ninth after penalties, pushing him down to third in the standings and 23 points off Piquet with two races left.

Watch: The last-lap battle between Buemi and Vergne in Moscow.

Before the final double header in London the focus was on winning Le Mans, although if the first two WEC rounds were anything to go by, Toyota’s chances looked slim. Once again, the Audis and Porsches were out of reach in qualifying, and those six German cars immediately pulled away in the race. Toyota were never in contention, but could at least boast good reliability, the only incident affecting them occurring when Davidson made contact with one of the GTE cars, forcing the No. 1 to pit for repairs which took fifteen minutes. Final position for the No. 1 car in Le Mans: Eighth and last of the classified LMP1s.

At the end of June, the Formula E season finale took place at Battersea Park in London, a weekend consisting of two races to decide the championship. Buemi presented his credentials in the best way possible by claiming pole position for race one, with di Grassi and Piquet on the second row. Due to the track’s width, the race was held to a rolling start and Buemi held his lead as Piquet lost position to Vergne, the Frenchman also overtaking di Grassi later on. Buemi had a two-second lead over d’Ambrosio before a crash for Daniel Abt and a failure at the pit entry for Sakon Yamamoto brought out the safety car. This did nothing to Buemi’s advantage and he won in relative comfort, his immediate rivals in fourth and fifth. Now Buemi was just five points off Piquet; a similar performance in race two would be enough for Sébastien to become the inaugural Formula E champion.

The last qualifying session of the season was held in wet weather; the first time Formula E cars would run competitively in such conditions. Buemi was forced to run in worse conditions than some of his competitors and ended up only sixth on the grid, but he was crucially ahead of di Grassi (eleventh) and Piquet (sixteenth). On paper, if the race finished like that, Buemi would be champion. It was to be a very memorable race, as both di Grassi and Piquet fought their way into the points. In the dying moments, Piquet was able to benefit from team orders forcing his teammate Oliver Turvey to let him past, before a late safety car caused by a crash for Fabio Leimer allowed the Brazilian to close up on and pass Salvador Durán for eighth. Buemi was in sixth at this point and trying everything to pass Senna and banged wheels with him on the final lap, but it never came off and Piquet ended up winning the title by just one point. It could very easily have gone the other way, as Buemi was only behind Senna in the first place due to a spin at the pit exit. As a consolation, e.dams Renault had won the Teams’ Championship.

Watch: The 2015 London ePrix highlights.

Pre-season testing for the 2015-16 Formula E season began in August and Buemi was pretty quick with the new Renault powertrain. Would he keep up the momentum in his second season? That question was put on hold while he picked up his WEC campaign again at the Nürburgring, where Toyota continued to be only third best to Audi and Porsche, the No.1 qualifying and finishing fifth.

Austin went better only in terms of finishing position, with the No. 1 finishing fourth and two laps down, with a brief scare for Davidson when he ran into trouble at the pit entry and had to complete a slow lap to avoid running out of fuel. Then it was Toyota’s home race in Fuji, where the No. 1 once again qualified and finished fifth, well off the German marques, but well ahead of the Rebellions and the infamous ByKolles.

The 24th October marked the start of the 2015-16 Formula E season, and Buemi was on pole with teammate Prost joining him on the front row. Buemi won quite easily by eleven second from di Grassi, the largest winning margin yet seen in a Formula E race. He also set the fastest lap, becoming the first Formula E driver to score maximum points in a race.

Watch: The 2015 Beijing ePrix highlights.

One week later Buemi went down to Shanghai for the next WEC round, where, after another fifth place qualifying performance, Nakajima spun the car into the gravel at the final corner, which took a while to dig out; they finished sixth, four laps down on the No. 17 Porsche, which gave that historic marque the World Manufacturers’ Championship.

Putrajaya was once again the second Formula E round and it was another pole for Buemi, showing that perhaps this really would be his year. Problems for second-placed Stéphane Sarrazin meant that Buemi was the only man on the front row. He promptly disappeared into the distance. Another win in the bag… Or not! On lap fifteen, Buemi was slowed by a software problem and was then forced to pit earlier than planned. Suddenly out of contention and forced to drive a little more conservatively to last the distance, Buemi finished twelfth, relinquishing the championship lead to race winner di Grassi by eight points.

With the next Formula E round more than a month away, Buemi could go to Bahrain for the final round of what was a very disappointing and winless WEC title defence. The No. 1’s amazing consistency was on display once again with a fifth consecutive fifth place in qualifying. They were beaten by the No. 2 car in the race, but they could boast being able to beat a Porsche and an Audi on the way to fourth, although this was more another show of the TS040’s excellent reliability than its ability to outpace the Volkswagen Group’s works teams in 2015.

For the next few months, all Buemi had to worry about was his Formula E chances, and surely he knew he had the fastest car of the lot. In Punta del Este he hit the wall in practice, but then that tends to happen to a lot of drivers. Unfortunately, he did not have his mistakes ironed out by qualifying, as he ran wide at turn eight, turning a likely pole into fifth place. Whether it was first or fifth it didn’t matter to the super-quick Renault powertrain, as it helped Buemi pass di Grassi at the start and hunt down Loïc Duval and Sam Bird on lap three. He then started to chip away at race leader d’Ambrosio at the rate of a second per lap until there was no gap left to close on lap eight, and Buemi made short work of him as well; by the time Buemi had made his car change, he had built up a gap of four seconds to the Dragon driver. Then it seemed as if race control wanted to create some drama of their own, as a miscommunication regarding a full course yellow caused Buemi to slow down too early and allow now-second-placed di Grassi to close up. Just a second separated them when the green flag came out, but Buemi still had the pace to extend a gap and won by 3.5 seconds, taking the championship lead back by just one point.

2016 (so far)

Buenos Aires kicked off the 2016 portion of the Formula E season and Buemi dramatically spun in qualifying and consigned himself to last place on the grid. He wrote off his chances of winning, but the race proved that anything could happen for him, quickly moving up to fifteenth by the end of the opening lap and ninth by lap ten. By the time he switched to his second car he was up to fourth and he quickly disposed of Sarrazin to join di Grassi and Bird in the fight for the lead. A brilliant move by the Swiss on di Grassi gave him second place and he spent the final few laps on Bird’s tail, not quite passing him, but coming far closer than he thought he would after qualifying; the gap between them at the end was just seven tenths.

The halfway point of the season was marked by Formula E’s first visit to a permanent circuit at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez. Just like the series’ visits to previously used temporary circuits like Long Beach and Monaco, this was to be a shortened layout of the famed Mexican track. Another compromised lap saw Buemi qualify only fifth. The first half of the race saw a train of cars that consisted of d’Ambrosio, Prost, di Grassi, Buemi and Abt jockeying for position, but with little change in that order. The second half saw a frustrated Buemi try everything conceivable (within limits) to get past d’Ambrosio, but to no avail. Then he rear-ended him, which achieved nothing and then he cut the first chicane, having to give the place back afterwards. It soon became clear that such unconventional methods would only draw unwanted attention and Buemi continued in the ‘proper’ way, finishing third and just a tenth off the Belgian, which became second after di Grassi was, like Berlin in 2015, found to be in contravention of the rules; this time it was related to the minimum weight. Thus, Buemi extended his championship lead to 22 points over di Grassi.

Watch: Buemi and d’Ambrosio do battle in Mexico.

Long Beach was next and once again a straightforward race eluded Buemi. He was mysteriously off the pace in qualifying, going eighth quickest. He made a great move on Abt in the race, before a not-so-great move was made a few laps later when he tore off Robin Frijns’ rear wing, also damaging his own front wing. He continued in fifth place, but the black and orange flag being waved told him to head into the pits and do something about that nose. Being forced to switch car and lose any chance of finishing, Buemi went for the fastest lap and scored two points in doing so; di Grassi won the race and took the championship lead by just one point.

WEC was the focus again in April, and Toyota brought a brand-spanking new car in the TS050 Hybrid; a much needed change after the disaster that was 2015. The opening round at Silverstone showed unfortunately recorded an Audi front row and a Porsche second row, with the Toyotas well off the pace on row three. Buemi’s No. 5 car was in its own battle with the other Toyota, the No. 6, before a right rear puncture destroyed the car’s rear bodywork in the latter stages.

Before finding out how things would go at Spa, Buemi was concerned with regaining the Formula E championship lead in the Paris round, the home race for the e.dams Renault team. Again, the pace just was not there in qualifying and eighth was Buemi’s starting position. His ability to make up positions shone as usual and he made some great on-track moves on the likes of Oliver Turvey, Sarrazin and Prost, and also pressured Bird into making a mistake. This allowed Buemi to end the race third, with di Grassi extending his championship lead with victory.

Back to the WEC, as Spa was next on the calendar. Toyota set a good pace in practice. The No. 5 car was only fifth on the grid, but the No. 6 showed that there was some hope by qualifying third behind the Porsches. Unfortunately, with this promising pace came unreliability; the No. 5 was leading by a minute when it ran into engine trouble, the same thing happening to the No. 6. The signs of a great car were at least there, something Toyota did not have in 2015.

The Berlin ePrix was held not at Tempelhof, but on a new street circuit on the Karl-Marx-Allee. Buemi finally got a good qualifying together with second behind Vergne, and he went back to controlling the pace and winning, though one wonders what might have been for chief rival di Grassi as the latter’s teammate Abt controversially ignored team orders to let the Brazilian past into second place; di Grassi remained in third while Buemi took his third win to bring the points gap back down to a single point. Another great finale was in store, but, with the cancellation of the Moscow round, it would be well over a month before any kind of resolution could be made.

Mid-June meant one thing in endurance racing terms: the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The Porsches led the way as usual in qualifying, but it was the Toyotas on the second row. With the track soaked in rain, it was decided to start the race under the safety car, which led the field for nearly an hour. Mike Conway in the No. 6 took the lead from Neel Jani’s Porsche in the run towards the Ford chicanes, with Buemi making it a Toyota 1-2. Eventually, as conditions improved, the Porsches came back into play, with the No. 1 car holding a 20-second lead from the No. 6 Toyota at the four-hour mark, the No. 5 down in fifth after making an unscheduled pit stop. Then disaster struck for the No. 1, as water temperatures reached critical levels and its driver, Brendon Hartley, was forced to pit, which allowed the No. 6 into the lead once more, with the No. 5 in second but not too far ahead of the No. 2 Porsche at half-distance. At 8am, Buemi overtook the No. 6 to take the lead of the race with the No. 2 Porsche still not far behind, but he extended his advantage to 20 seconds when he pulled in to hand over to Davidson at around the 19-hour mark. The battle for the lead continued to rage between the two Toyotas and the Porsche for the rest of the morning and into the afternoon in what was already one of the most exciting battles in recent Le Mans history. As the chequered flag approached, the No. 5’s advantage of one minute and ten seconds at the beginning of the last stint was reduced to 30 seconds by a charging Jani, but, with ten minutes to go, the Porsche had to make another pit stop, and Kazuki Nakajima in the No. 5 looked set to win. Three and a half minutes from the end, Nakajima came around the Ford chicanes to begin his final lap when catastrophe struck: He suffered a sudden loss of power and the car ground to a halt. Unable to get going again, he relinquished victory at the death of the race to the Porsche in what will surely go down as one of the biggest heartbreak moments in the history of Le Mans, if not the history of motorsport. Words alone do not do justice to what Buemi surely must have felt in losing certain victory in one of the world’s greatest races, but here is what he had to say:

“It’s hard to find the words for what has happened today. We were in control of the race and were so close to the win that we all want. This is the biggest race of the year so it’s even tougher to accept. It is so disappointing for the whole team; we did the right preparation and we had the car to win. So we already look to next year when the target will be clear.”

Watch: Heartbreak for the drivers of the Toyota’s #5 car, which stopped on the final lap whilst leading.

No matter the case, Buemi would have to put Le Mans behind him, as he had a Formula E title to worry about. Rain in qualifying for London made it impossible for Buemi to set a competitive time and he went twelfth on the grid with di Grassi also struggling in tenth. They both fought ferociously to maximise their point-scoring opportunities and were virtually nose-to-tail for the entirety of the first race. As they made their way through, Abt was willing to listen to team orders for a change and held up Buemi long enough for race control to intervene, and the Swiss made found a way past. Di Grassi dramatically damaged his front wing trying to pass Vergne, but this had no ill effect on him; his chances of passing were soon neutralised by double-waved yellows after a crash for Turvey. The title contenders finished fourth and fifth – di Grassi ahead – with just three points now separating them for the final race.

Buemi claimed the three points for pole in race two, drawing the two title protagonists level for the decider; di Grassi was third. As the race got underway, the two e.dams cars led into turn one when suddenly di Grassi ran straight into the back of Buemi in the first braking zone at turn three, severely damaging both cars. In an almost surreal turn of events that could only occur under the unique regulations of Formula E, both drivers limped back to the pits to get into their second cars, guaranteeing that neither of them would ultimately finish – they were targeting the fastest lap. They each went for setups that allowed for maximum performance levels without worrying about battery consumption as they so often would, and waiting for a clear track to launch their assaults, effectively turning the race into the most intense qualifying session ever witnessed. Eventually, the superiority of the Renault powertrain over the Audi powering di Grassi showed, with Buemi going half a second quicker than the Brazilian with a 1:24.150. The two points, and the championship, were his. He was happy with the title, but he suddenly had no respect for his former GP2 teammate:

“I was not expecting to celebrate it that way. But I’m more than happy. It was a tough season, and what [di Grassi] did [at Turn 3] I didn’t know what to think. Even after when we were trying to set the fastest lap, he was waiting for me. But in the end the best team and the best driver won.”

He later added:

“I mean, you’re always gonna brake in a different way because the brakes and tyres are cold and we don’t have a formation lap, you just have to take a look at the footage. Honestly, I have zero respect for this guy, so now we’ll see what the race direction says – but I’m very happy with what I’ve done, because I’ve done the right thing. What he said is actually disrespectful because first of all he is lying and second of all he made a huge mistake and he is trying to blame someone else.”

Watch: The 2016 London ePrix highlights.

Epilogue

Assessing Sébastien Buemi’s time in Formula One is difficult due to the teammates he was up against, but even so, he has a favourable record against both Sébastien Bourdais and Jaime Alguersuari. Toro Rosso were in a difficult situation in 2011, with no seat available for either of its drivers at Red Bull and at the same time they had two new youngsters in Jean-Éric Vergne and Daniel Ricciardo who were ready for a new challenge in a relatively competitive F1 car. Unfortunately, the decision not to renew Buemi and Alguersuari came too late for them to find a decent drive elsewhere in the sport, and so they had to try and forge new destinies in other categories of motorsport.

At 27, Sébastien heads into the 2016-17 Formula E season as reigning champion and remains an e.dams Renault driver, with the development of a potentially volatile rivalry with Lucas di Grassi remaining a possibility. His WEC commitments also continue, though he has yet to match his Le Mans near-success this season, only managing fifth at the Nürburgring and Austin since then; but with three rounds still to go, anything is possible. Sébastien also maintains a close relationship with the Red Bull F1 team, though his reserve role has since been taken up by GP2 frontrunner Pierre Gasly due to his FE and WEC commitments. He has, however, made appearances in testing and demonstration runs for Red Bull in the five years since he last raced for Toro Rosso, his most recent outing being in July when he tested Pirelli’s prototype tyres for 2017. He has also been rumoured as a potential candidate for Renault F1 in 2017, with Red Bull even going so far as to directly offer him to them, though it is understood as of writing that it is unlikely such a signing will be made.

Off-track, Sébastien still lives in Monaco, and in February 2016 he and his wife Jessica welcomed the arrival of a son whom they named Jules. He loves Italian food and his hobbies include music, tennis, soccer and biking. He also enjoys spending time with his family in Switzerland.